Get Black Friday Ready With These Moves

Prepare For Black Friday With These 5 Moves

Lauren Neal

With Black Friday beckoning, many people have signed themselves up for a full day of shopping.

Often times this will mean a long day where you’re on your feet for most of it. Rather than going into this shop fest unprepared, these moves will help your body get ready for what it has in store.

1. Start With A Dynamic Warm-Up

When warming up, dynamic moves are best, essentially a stretch with movement. Gone are the days of static stretching cold muscles. While you don’t have to warm up by necessarily jogging around the parking lot, a march or little jog on the spot, (maybe even while in line), could work well. From there, complete a few of the exercises below!

2. Squat Away

Bending down, reaching up, you’ll likely be doing a lot of it. In order to prepare those legs, try a few squats. Squat by first planting your feet about hip-width apart. Move backwards through the hips as you sit back in an imaginary chair. Keep your chest up with your shoulders down and back. Complete about 30 seconds worth of these bad boys to get blood circulating.

3. Focus On Your Hip Flexors

Our hip flexors are often tight due to all the sitting we do during the day. Strong hip flexors have been proven to enhance performance in sprints, something you may be doing on Black Friday. To stretch your hip flexors, kneel on your right knee and bend your left knee, placing it in front of you. Shift more body weight onto your front leg and you should feel a stretch on your right side. To intensify the stretch, take the same arm as your back leg up and over your head. Hold for about 30 seconds and repeat on the other side. Strengthening your hip flexors along with hamstrings and glutes also plays a part in everyday mobility; it’s something we’ll be talking about in weeks to come!

4. Mobilize Your Shoulders

You’ll likely be doing a lot of reaching up, across, around, and therefore your shoulders need to be warmed up. Start with shoulder rolls forward by bringing the shoulder up and around. From there, you can add the arms and make the movements bigger when you’re ready. After about 20-30 seconds, switch directions.

5. Core, Core, Core

A strong core has an endless list of benefits for the body. It will help you move efficiently, turn quickly, stabilize your low back, improve balance, coordination, and more. A seemingly simple exercise yields fantastic results! Sit on your sitting bones with your legs bent in front of you, feet pointing forward. Keep your core engaged by pulling your belly button to your spine as you roll your shoulders down and back. From there, bring your upper body back so that it’s at about 45 degrees. Hold here for about 30 seconds and release. To intensify this, you can pick up the legs, or add arms by bringing them above your head and back down. Complete this move 3 times.  

These moves will get you warmed up and may even get you some extra deals!