In this 10‑minute guided video, Lindsey Baumgren of Nourish Move Love walks viewers through her personal morning mobility routine designed to keep the body mobile, reduce injury risk, and aid recovery. She begins by introducing the essential tools—a foam roller and a hard small ball (lacrosse or tennis)—and demonstrates a sequence of self‑myofascial release and stretch exercises targeting the upper back, hips, quads, glutes, inner thighs, neck, shoulders, and upper back. Throughout, she explains positioning, rolling techniques, how to locate and hold "sticky" or trigger points, and differentiates hold times for pre‑workout (≈30 seconds) versus post‑workout or standalone sessions (up to 2 minutes). The routine emphasizes single‑sided work for isolation, incorporates child’s pose for spinal extension, rear‑foot‑elevated quad stretches for squat mobility, and lacrosse‑ball work for inner‑thigh, neck, and shoulder release. Lindsey intersperses practical cues on breathing, water‑flow metaphor for lactic acid, and encourages viewers to adapt holds to personal tension. She concludes by stressing the importance of recovery as athletes age, invites viewers to subscribe, and promotes additional mobility content on nourishmovelove.com.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Lindsey Baumgren of Nourish Move Love and today I'm taking you through my 10 minute morning mobility routine. These are the exercises I personally go through every morning when I wake up. So I head down to my basement, I grab my foam roller. So you're going to need a foam roller and then a lacrosse ball. You can use a tennis ball, any type of small ball. You want it to be nice and hard. Okay, we'll use this at the end. If you don't have it, don't worry, you can follow along. Your foam roller is your main tool. Alright, so this is a good 10 minute mobility routine. Keep your body nice and mobile and moving and injury free. That's the goal. Right? So I head down to my basement first thing in the morning. I take my foam roller, set it down and I do a nice little upper back roll because it just feels good. Okay, so I'm going to place the foam roller in my upper back right along in line with my sports bra. Place my hands across my chest, legs are bent 90 degrees, I'm going to roll back, head goes back. And then as I roll forward, I'm performing almost like a mini crunch. That core comes nice and tight so I just roll back and fourth. I just take a couple rolls here, see if I find any sore spots in that back. Alright, nice. Just rolling back and forth here. So I'm going to go through this. I just roll here for as long as it feels good or until my daughter crawls on top of me and I can't roll anymore. And then after that I come up and over. So this is really going to target your hips. My hips are my sticky point. So I spend a lot of time with my hips and my quads. So I take one leg. I like going single sided on this. You just get more bang for your buck. It's a little bit more isolated and concent and I place it right in line with my hips. I just kind of roll back and forth here until I find my sticky point and my body lets me know when I find that sticky point, I kind of sit on it and hold it for a little bit. So now if I'm doing this pre workout, I'm not going to hold a sticky point or a trigger point for longer than 30 seconds. If I hold something over 30 seconds, so say I hold it for 60 seconds, it starts to send signals to my brain to tell that muscle to really relax and release. So if I'm doing this in the morning and I'm not going to work out for a while, or if I'm doing this late at night, I'll sit here and I'll hold it for up to two minutes. I'll hold that sticky point and just kind of sit on it in little tiny rolls. Okay. And then it tells my body to release the tension and relax that muscle. But I'm only doing that if it's post workout, pre workout. I only want to hold for about 30 seconds because I want to get that muscle ready to fire. From this hip, I go right into a quad roll. So I start to roll towards the top of my thigh. I like to start at the top and just slowly roll down. If you have tight hips, you'll notice you might also have tight quads. Right? You're going to find some points in there that are really a little bit painful almost. And what you're doing is you're pushing water through your mus, so you're pushing water, lactic acid. If you're tight or sore, you're pushing that through your muscles. Okay? That's what we want to do. We want to create movement. You don't want it to just sit there, right? And then after I get through my quad, I'll slowly start to pivot and go a little bit into my glutes. So this is a tiny, tiny roll just hitting the top of my glute. I always like to start at the top of the muscle and push down. So I'm just getting the glute a little bit here. We'll get deeper into the glute on the next run when we go into a little bit of a quad, I can show you right now, actually. So if I feel, ooh, this glute is real nice and tender. I'll come and over and I'm actually going to sit my butt on it, and I'm going to go into a figure four. So ankle goes across me, and I'm going to get into my glute and paraphoris right here, this tiny little roll there. It is a lot of fire. If you've just finished a bar workout or a nice workout that really targeted the glutes, this is going to feel it. Okay, So a nice little roll right here. And I'll hold these for longer than I'm walking through them with you. This is really meant to show you my routine. You can follow along with this video and go ahead and do it, but I really want you to hold those points that are sticking for you longer. Okay, so now I'm going into the other hip Right. So we're going to do the same thing on the other side. So I'm going to take the foam roller, line it up with my hip, and I'm just going to roll right here. Like I said, my hips are my sticky point. So I spend a lot more time on the front side of my body than I do the back side of my body with foam rolling. I encourage you to do both. Definitely. If you have tight hamstrings, you might want to focus more on the hamstring. I suggest doing it single sided. So hit the right leg and then the left leg. You just get more isolation if you're really focusing on one leg at a time versus two. Okay. And then from here I go into that quad roll. So getting little bit more into the quad. Nice and tight. That feels good, right? It shouldn't feel painful, but it'll probably get uncomfortable. And that's good, right? Uncomfortable. You want it to be uncomfortable because that means it's actually working. It's pushing that water, that lactic acid through the muscles nice and slowly, just rolling side to side, hitting all heads of my quad. Right. And then again, I slowly roll over onto the hip. Get a nice little hip roll right here in that hip crease, hitting this outer glute. And then if I really feel that glute is tender, I'll come back up onto my foam ro and I'll go ahead and find that seated figure four stretch again, hit over onto the hip and just roll. There it is. Oh, yeah, there it is. Nice. And you will know when you hit those sticky points and you can just sit into them. Just breathe through it. Take a deep breath, big inhale, big exhale. Breathe into those trigger points. So good to sit on those. And you'll notice after sitting on it for about 30 seconds, it'll start to release a little bit and it'll feel a lot better. Right? Okay, now that I've really opened up my hips, I'm gonna come over and go into a child's pose. This is one of my favorite favorite ways, especially if you're sitting at a desk all day. I come back to this throughout the day. Child's pose. Big toes to touch, arms go on top of the foam roller, thumbs facing up. I'm just going to push away, creating extension and length with my body so my forehead can fall down towards the mat. Opening up my hips as I reach and open up my back extensors here. Just creating. Oh, this feels so good. Putting your hands on the foam roller. So good. And a great Way to create mobility with overhead movements. If you find that overhead presses are difficult for you, this is a great way to increase. Increase your range of motion and mobility with an overhead press as well. So you can ha out here, come back to this throughout the day. This just feels so good, opening up the upper body as well as the lower body. And then I come over, and this is. Typically, I do this on the couch. My couch is just a little bit shorter. This foam roller is a little high for me, but I'm going to try and show you. It's like a rear foot elevated. Right. I'm going to place the top of my foot on my foam roller here, and then I'm just going to come up. Like I said, my quads are my sticky point. So I'm just opening up this hip. Do this on my couch. It's just a hair lower. This is just a hair too high for me, but really opening up my hip and my quad right here. This feels so good. If you want to intensify it, you're going to reach that arm overhead. You can grab this wrist and pull up and over. Nice. This is going to open up this hip and this quad. One of my favorite ways to just kind of sit. And it's not about, like, necessarily arching back as much as it is about a tiny pelvic tilt. So just tucking my tailbone under, like you do in a bar workout, Just tuck that tailbone under. You feel that quad really, really open up, and we're going to make it even. So we're going to do it on the other side as well. If I can do this without getting my foam roller to fall over, it'll miracle you guys. There we go. Nice. Oh, there we go. Nice. It's a little high for me. It's a great way to increase range of motion, especially if you're working on a rear foot elevated squat or a split lunge where you have one foot up on a chair. You want to make sure you have good range of motion right before you attempt some of those moves. So this is really great. Really. Again, focusing on the hips and the quads. Some of my personal sticky areas. Like I said, this is my personal morning mobility routine that I go through. Okay. Tuck that tailbone. Nice. From here, we're going to open up those hips. So I'm going to take the foam roller set off to the side using just my body weight. I don't even know where did my. Oh. I was like, yes. Look at that camera. Magic, you guys. I was like, where did the lacrosse ball. Go. Okay, so I'm going to come into a half kneeling position. I'm going to take this leg and I'm going to open it up almost to a 40 or right out to the side if I can. Now my back of my hand is going to slide along my leg, reaching towards my ankle, maybe getting to the floor if I can. Really hitting the inner thigh and reaching up overhead. I don't want to hinge over, right. I want to keep the shoulder open square, reaching straight up to the sky, really hitting my inner hip again, like I said, that's where I spend a lot of time. And I'll just hold this position for 30 seconds. Right. Feels so good. And it's also a challenging move. Try it. Okay. And then we're going to do that on the other side. This half kneeling. Open up this leg. Back of the hand slides down, looking up overhead. Almost like what is this, like half moon in yoga? I'm not the greatest at those, the names, but basically if you can push your elbow into this leg too, that's going to create a little bit more hip opening. It's going to feel really good. Alright, so from there I've gotten a pretty good stretch into my lower body and my time's running out, my kids are waking up, so I'm going to go into my neck and shoulders and use this lacrosse ball for a little bit. But basically the first stretch is just a gentle neck stretch. Okay, Releasing. I carry a lot of tension in my neck, so just a nice little neck stretch right here, creating length through my trap and through my neck. And then to intensify this, I take this right hand and reach it for the middle of my back. I'm going to turn to the side so you can see this. So I'm just gently pulling down and then opening up, reaching right here, opening up my shoulder and opening up my traps. Right. Traps tend to get involved in a lot of power moves like cleans and deadlifts. Anything like that that we do, we shrug our shoulders. It's a nice little way to lengthen. Create length through the neck and shoulders right here. And then I do that same thing on the other side. So just opening up the neck. You can option stay here, option. Take that half wrap. So again, reaching for the middle of your back. This half wrap around feels so good. Again, a stretch that I come back to throughout the day when I find myself sitting at my computer for eight hours in a row. A good stretch to just shake it out. So from there I shake it out and my final stretch, if my kids give me time, I take this beautiful lacrosse ball and we head back to this wall. I'm gonna get more into my upper back, right? A lot of place where we carry tension, our upper back. I just simply take this lacrosse ball and I put it against the wall in my upper back. Oh, my goodness. I can already feel all these trigger points, points. And I just slowly roll back and forth. Slowly roll. And I'll slowly work down, working the ball up my upper back. Finding a sticky point. Oof. And sitting on it. A tiny little rock right there. This is one of the best massages you're ever going to give yourself. It is quite painful, right? Got to find that nice hard ball. You can use a tennis ball. And just slowly rolling down. And then I'll slowly take it up my back and get a little bit more into my upper back. That trap again, just rolling back and forth right there. Oh, there it is. There's that sticky point. There it is. Yeah. This feels so good. Just this tiny. And I'll sit here maybe for a minute or two. Like I said, I have small kids. They're jumping all over in the morning. I just try and get this in before I have to feed them breakfast. Oh, my goodness. This is hitting so many trigger points right now. I clearly need to do more of this, right? And then I'll do the same thing on the other side. Taking the ball, placing it behind my back and giving those rules again on the other side. So those are my main exercises that I go through every morning. Try to keep this in a short 10 minute mobility routine for you so you can follow along. But also see what I do and find what works for you and hold those areas that you personally need to hold. Right. I always say if you want to train like an athlete, if you're doing my workouts, you're an athlete, you got to recover like an athlete, Right. I'm taking recovery very seriously the older I get. Honestly, I didn't take this as seriously in, say, my, my 20s, but now that I'm in my 30s, I'm definitely taking this seriously. And I encourage you to too. So if you liked this mobility routine and you want to see more of my mobility workouts, go ahead, hit subscribe to this channel. Make sure you check out nourishmovelove.com we have a full body stretching routine and we're going to be launching some more foam rolling series on there. So continue to come back. I look forward to staying active with you guys. And in order to stay active. We have to rest and recover. So take your rest and recover seriously, and I'll see you again soon.
