Do you wake up feeling tired and not ready to face the day? Does your body feel stiff? Do you feel like your joints protest all kinds of movement in the morning? First of all you should probably invest into a better bed and mattress. You can’t underestimate how much those things impact the quality of your sleep and how you feel in the morning. But another very beneficial thing you can do is some easy morning exercises that will get your blood flowing and your body moving. It’s a great way to truly wake yourself up and get yourself in the right mindset and ready for the day ahead.
1. Neck Stretches
Most people nowadays suffer from neck pain and neck stiffness on the regular basis. We spend way too much time on the laptop and our phone and it strains our neck. Even a good night’s sleep won’t be able to fix this, since we strain our neck daily. What can really help is doing neck stretches every morning. Here’s a helpful video to guide you:
2. Shoulder Release
We also tend to carry a lot of tension in our shoulders and upper back. To shake off some of that stress you can try to do the classic windmill exercise or shoulder rotation clockwise and then counterclockwise. Yoga for shoulder release is also a great option.
3. Jumping Jacks
Jumping jacks are a classic for a good reason. This exercise gets your whole body moving. You’re jumping up and down and moving both your arms and your legs. Nothing wakes you up better than a round of jumping jacks.
4. Cat Cow Poses
To really stretch out and loosen up your back and at the same time wake up your muscles try alternating between cat and cow yoga poses. It’s a low effort exercise but it’ll make you feel good and like you’re in tune with your body first thing in the morning.
5. Lunges
If you work in the office you probably spend the majority of your day sitting down at your desk. So it’s never a bad idea to do some lunges in the morning. In fact, try to sneak up some lunges during the breaks at work too.
6. Squats
Who doesn’t want a nice booty, am I right? Well doing a round or two of squats every morning will get you on the road to success in that department. Plus, glutes are some of your biggest muscles, so getting them awake and ready for the day is crucial.
7. Crunches
Activate your core with some crunches in the morning. Do some classic crunches, bicycle crunches, reverse crunches. If you only do sets of 20 in the morning you probably won’t even be out of breath but you’ll feel so much better the rest of the day.
8. Run
Going for a run in the morning is one of the best things you can do for your body and mind in the morning. It’ll get your blood flowing, those happy hormones will get released, you’ll feel great and have some time to get your thoughts together before work.
