Limber
Beside the battery — it prescribes rather than reads

Stretching routine generator

Pick the areas that feel tight and how many minutes you have, and this builds a routine you can print. Holds run 30 to 60 seconds, once each — 30 seconds beat 15 in the trial the number comes from, and one hold matched three. The positions are the 56 in Limber’s own catalogue, not a list written for a web page.

Six areas, four time budgets, two levels. The routine is deterministic: the same address always builds the same sheet, so a printed page still matches the link a fortnight later.

Builds A printed routine, one page Kit Floor, a wall, a strap if you have one Library 56 positions, the app’s own Open No account, no sign-up

How the routine is built

Three inputs, one deterministic build, no shuffle anywhere in it. The areas you tick decide which of the catalogue’s 56 positions are eligible; the level decides how hard they are allowed to be; the minutes decide how many fit.

  1. Movement first, holds after. One controlled movement per area opens the routine, capped at under a third of your minutes, then the held positions run. That order is this site’s own published argument: moving warms tissue and rehearses the joint, and holding is where range work actually happens.
  2. Areas take turns. The holds go round the areas you picked rather than emptying the first one’s drawer, so a short routine spreads across your choices instead of being a hip session with a label on it.
  3. Each hold appears once. Time is filled by adding positions, never by repeating one. Bandy, Irion and Briggler compared one 30-second hold a day against three and found one matched three, so a second lap of the same stretch is time spent for nothing anybody has measured.
  4. It stops when the catalogue runs out. If your areas have no more eligible positions, the routine comes in under your budget and says so. Padding it would be inventing work.
  5. Every hold is the app’s own. The length against each position is the one Limber runs it for — 30 to 60 seconds, which is where the duration trials sit — and both sides are counted where the position is one-sided.

Twelve seconds are allowed between positions for getting off the wall and onto the mat. That is an assumption rather than a measurement, and leaving it out is what makes a printed ten minutes take fourteen.

Which areas feel tight?
How long have you got?
How hard should the positions be?

Hips · Hamstrings · Shoulders · Ankles · Lower back

9 min 53 sec

9 positions · Standard · asked for 10 minutes, and nothing was picked, so this is the whole body.

Move first — warms the joint before it is held

90/90 Hip Switch 45s
  1. Sit on the floor with one leg bent in front at 90 degrees and the other bent out to the side at 90 degrees.
  2. Sit tall through the spine.
  3. Rotate both knees across to the other side, switching the shape.
  4. Move slowly from the hips, keeping your chest lifted.

Ease off ifany pinch deep in the hip socket

Downward Dog Calf Pedals 45s
  1. From hands and knees, tuck your toes and lift your hips up and back into an inverted V.
  2. Keep a slight bend in the knees and a long spine.
  3. Pedal your heels one at a time, pressing one down as the other lifts.
  4. Move steadily with your breath as the calves and hamstrings wake up.

Ease off ifsharp pain in the achilles tendon

Wall Slides 45s
  1. Stand with your back, hips, and head against a wall, feet a step out.
  2. Bring your arms into a goalpost with the backs of the hands toward the wall.
  3. Slide your arms up overhead, keeping them as close to the wall as you can.
  4. Lower back to the start with control, keeping your ribs down.

Ease off ifpinching in the front of the shoulder

Then hold — this is where range work happens

Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch 40s each side
  1. Kneel on one knee with the other foot flat in front, both bent near 90 degrees.
  2. Tuck your tailbone under and gently squeeze the back glute.
  3. Shift your hips forward until you feel a stretch at the front of the back hip.
  4. Keep your chest tall and breathe slowly.

Ease off ifpinching in the front of the hip

Standing Forward Fold 40s
  1. Stand tall, feet hip-width, with a soft bend in your knees.
  2. Hinge from your hips and fold your chest toward your thighs.
  3. Let your head and arms hang heavy, or hold opposite elbows.
  4. Soften a little deeper on each exhale without forcing.

Ease off ifsharp pulling behind the knees

Doorway Pec Stretch 30s
  1. Stand in a doorway and place your forearms on the frame, elbows at shoulder height.
  2. Step one foot through the doorway.
  3. Lean your weight gently forward until you feel a stretch across your chest.
  4. Keep your ribs down and breathe.

Ease off ifany tingling down the arm

Wall Calf Stretch, Straight Knee 40s each side
  1. Stand facing a wall with your hands on it at chest height.
  2. Step one foot back, keeping that leg straight and the heel pressed down.
  3. Bend your front knee and lean toward the wall until the back calf stretches.
  4. Keep the back foot pointing straight ahead and breathe.

Ease off ifsharp pain in the achilles or calf

Kneeling Toe Stretch 30s
  1. Kneel on a mat and tuck your toes under so the balls of your feet press down.
  2. Slowly sit your hips back toward your heels.
  3. Go only as far as you feel a stretch through your toes and the soles of your feet.
  4. Support some weight on your hands to ease the intensity if you need to.

Ease off ifsharp pain in the toes or the tops of the feet

Lying Open-Book 45s each side
  1. Lie on your side with your knees bent and stacked, arms reaching out in front.
  2. Keep the knees heavy and glued together on the floor.
  3. Open the top arm up and over toward the other side, following it with your eyes.
  4. Return slowly and repeat, rotating through your upper back.

Ease off ifany pinch in the lower back or shoulder

Neck did not fit. 10 minutes across 6 areas does not stretch to all of them. Give it more minutes, or build that area their own sheet another day.

Limber · limberbody.app/tools/stretch-routine · holds are 30–60 seconds, once each. Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. Nothing here diagnoses or treats anything.

The dose, and where each number comes from

Nothing on the sheet is a house opinion. Each figure below is one this site already publishes with the trial behind it, and the routine is built to it rather than around it.

WhatThe figureWhere it comes from
Hold length 30 seconds Thirty seconds beat fifteen, and sixty did not beat thirty, in adults aged 20 to 40.
Hold length past 65 60 seconds In adults aged 65 and over, sixty seconds was clearly better than thirty.
Holds per position 1 One hold matched three, at both thirty and sixty seconds.
Days a week 2–3 At least two to three days a week, with daily noted as most effective.
Weeks before a change shows 3–6 Pooled hamstring trials found consistent range gains from programmes of three weeks or more.

The holds on your sheet run from 30 to 60 seconds because those are the lengths the app runs each position for, and they sit inside the window the duration trials support rather than beside it. If you are over 65, hold everything for 60 seconds — the plateau moves, and that is a direct finding rather than an extrapolation.

What this routine is not for

Three things stretching is widely sold as doing, which this site has already looked up and graded, so the sheet claims none of them.

  • Next-day soreness. Pooled trials put the effect at one to two points on a hundred-point scale — a difference nobody could feel. Stretching for DOMS: the answer is barely has the numbers.
  • Injury. A trial of 1,538 army recruits found pre-exercise stretching did not reduce lower-limb injuries, and the meta-analysis that pooled the field found strength training cut injury rates while stretching showed no significant effect. Limber does not claim otherwise, here or anywhere.
  • Making muscle longer. Three to eight weeks of stretching does not appear to change the mechanical properties of the muscle–tendon unit. Your range moves because your tolerance at length moves.

What is left is the thing it is actually for: more range at a joint, over weeks, for a small and forgiving amount of work.

Measure before and after

A routine you cannot measure is a routine you cannot judge. Take the reading that covers each area before you start, keep the sheet for 3 to 6 weeks, and take it again — but never straight after stretching, because the extra range from a session is back at baseline within about three minutes.

Hips Deep Squat Test · Hip Flexor Test
Hamstrings Toe Touch Test
Shoulders Shoulder Mobility Test
Ankles Knee to Wall Test
Lower back Toe Touch Test · Deep Squat Test
Neck Shoulder Mobility Test

Two of those readings are inferences rather than direct measurements, and it is worth knowing. The neck is read off the shoulder reach. Half the lower-back score comes from a forward fold. The app names the areas it is inferring rather than pretending one movement measured five things, and so does this row.

Put it on your own page

A five-minute full-body routine, the same one this builder makes, sized to sit in an article. Paste this where you want it. Keep the line under the frame — an iframe is invisible to a reader who wants to know where the routine came from, and that link is the only part of this anybody can follow.

<iframe src="https://limberbody.app/tools/stretch-routine/embed"
        width="100%" height="460" style="border:0;max-width:600px"
        loading="lazy" title="A five-minute stretching routine"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://limberbody.app/tools/stretch-routine">Stretching routine generator</a> by Limber</p>

It is one static document with no script in it and no font or stylesheet to fetch, so it costs a host page almost nothing and has no content policy to satisfy. The five positions are the same on every load, so a page that framed it last autumn shows what it showed then.

If it hurts

Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. The target is a firm stretch you can breathe through, not something you brace against. Sharp, electric or numb means ease out immediately, and a position that produces it is not one to hold longer.

Tightness and pain are different problems, and this routine is built for the first one. Pain that radiates into a limb, numbness, weakness, symptoms that followed a fall or an injury, or back pain with fever, unexplained weight loss or a change in bladder or bowel control all need a clinician who can examine you — when to see a physio sets out the thresholds. Nothing here diagnoses or treats anything.

Questions
How long should I hold a stretch?

Thirty seconds for most adults, and sixty if you are over 65. Bandy and Irion randomised 57 adults aged 20 to 40 to 15, 30 or 60 seconds of hamstring stretching, five days a week for six weeks: thirty beat fifteen, and sixty did not beat thirty. Feland and colleagues ran the same shape of trial in adults 65 and over and found the plateau had moved — sixty was clearly better than thirty there. The holds on your sheet run 30 to 60 seconds because those are the lengths the app runs each position for, and they sit inside that window. One caveat worth carrying: the duration trials are overwhelmingly hamstring trials, and applying them to a shoulder or an ankle is extrapolation.

How often should I do the routine?

Two or three days a week is enough to make progress, and daily is fine rather than clearly better. That is the American College of Sports Medicine's position stand, and it is worth saying that it is a consensus document rather than a trial. What the trials point at is that accumulated time across the week matters more than how you divide it up — so the arrangement to pick is the one you will actually keep for six weeks, which is the real constraint.

Should I stretch before or after a workout?

Move before, hold after. Dynamic work — controlled movement through a range — warms tissue and rehearses the joint, which is what you want in the ten minutes before an effort. Long static holds immediately before a maximal effort do measurably reduce force output, by around five per cent in the pooled trials, and that decrement largely disappears if you finish your warm-up afterwards. So the honest instruction is not "never stretch before training": it is keep the holds short beforehand, and finish with movement. Range work itself belongs after training or in its own session.

Is a longer routine a better routine?

Not in the way people expect. Bandy, Irion and Briggler compared one 30-second hold a day against three, and one 60-second hold against three, in 93 people over six weeks: one matched three in both comparisons. So the thing to cut when you are short of time is repetitions, not areas — one hold on four areas beats three holds on one. This builder never repeats a position to fill time, which is why a routine sometimes comes in under the minutes you asked for and says so.

Will this help with muscle soreness or stop me getting injured?

No to both, and it is worth being direct about it because the category is not. Cochrane pooled the trials of stretching for delayed onset muscle soreness and found an effect of the order of one to two points on a hundred-point scale, before exercise, after it, or both — a difference nobody could feel. On injury, a trial of 1,538 army recruits found pre-exercise stretching did not reduce lower-limb injuries, and the meta-analysis that pooled the field found strength training cut injury rates substantially while stretching showed no significant effect. That is inconvenient for everybody selling stretching, ourselves included. What is left is range at a joint, over weeks, which is what this sheet is for.

What if an area hurts rather than feels tight?

Then it is a different problem and this is the wrong page for it. Tightness and pain are not the same thing, and treating one as the other is how people spend months stretching something that needed examining. Stop at a stretch and never at sharp pain — sharp, electric or numb means ease out. Pain that radiates into a limb, numbness, weakness, symptoms that followed a fall or an injury, or back pain with fever, unexplained weight loss or a change in bladder or bowel control all need a clinician who can examine you. Nothing here diagnoses or treats anything.

Can I print the routine?

Yes, and it is built for it. The sheet prints on one page with the positions in order, the hold against each and a ruled space beside every one to write reps, a date or how it felt. The web page carries the full instructions for each position; the printed sheet drops them, because paper is for the room and the screen is for learning the position in. The address carries your whole choice, so the same link rebuilds the same sheet — nothing to save and nothing to sign up for.

Where do the positions come from?

Limber's own catalogue — all 56 of them, the same file the app builds a session from, with the same hold lengths, the same instruction lines and the same note about when to ease off each one. Nothing on this page was written for the web. The builder filters that catalogue by the areas you tick and the level you pick, orders it movement-first and holds-after, and fills your minutes by adding positions rather than repeating them.

Read about it
How long to hold a stretch How often should you stretch? Static vs dynamic stretching Hip mobility exercises for all six directions Hamstring stretches: the one settled dose Desk stretches that earn their two minutes
More tools
Range Score

The composite. Whatever you have measured, rolled into one 0–100 reading and drawn as an elevation profile — with the ground you skipped left dashed.

 Hip Mobility Test

The hips, in three positions: a squat hold and a hip flexor check scored on the app's own anchors, and a rotation compare that is read left against right rather than scored.

 Toe Touch Test

Posterior chain — hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Five bands, one 0–100 reading.

 Knee to Wall Test

Ankle dorsiflexion in centimetres, left and right kept apart. One of two tests in the battery that produce a real measured number.
Sources
  1. Bandy WD, Irion JM. The effect of time on static stretch on the flexibility of the hamstring muscles. Physical Therapy 1994;74(9):845–50; discussion 850–2. doi:10.1093/ptj/74.9.845
  2. Feland JB, Myrer JW, Schulthies SS, Fellingham GW, Measom GW. The effect of duration of stretching of the hamstring muscle group for increasing range of motion in people aged 65 years or older. Physical Therapy 2001;81(5):1110–7. PMID 11319936
  3. Bandy WD, Irion JM, Briggler M. The effect of time and frequency of static stretching on flexibility of the hamstring muscles. Physical Therapy 1997;77(10):1090–6. doi:10.1093/ptj/77.10.1090
  4. Garber CE, Blissmer B, Deschenes MR, Franklin BA, Lamonte MJ, Lee IM et al. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: guidance for prescribing exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 2011;43(7):1334–59. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e318213fefb
  5. Thomas E, Bianco A, Paoli A, Palma A. The Relation Between Stretching Typology and Stretching Duration: The Effects on Range of Motion. International Journal of Sports Medicine 2018;39(4):243–254. doi:10.1055/s-0044-101146
  6. Medeiros DM, Cini A, Sbruzzi G, Lima CS. Influence of static stretching on hamstring flexibility in healthy young adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice 2016;32(6):438–445. doi:10.1080/09593985.2016.1204401
  7. Simic L, Sarabon N, Markovic G. Does pre-exercise static stretching inhibit maximal muscular performance? A meta-analytical review. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports 2013;23(2):131–48. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0838.2012.01444.x
  8. Blazevich AJ, Gill ND, Kvorning T, Kay AD, Goh AG, Hilton B et al. No Effect of Muscle Stretching within a Full, Dynamic Warm-up on Athletic Performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 2018;50(6):1258–1266. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000001539
  9. Behm DG, Blazevich AJ, Kay AD, McHugh M. Acute effects of muscle stretching on physical performance, range of motion, and injury incidence in healthy active individuals: a systematic review. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism 2016;41(1):1–11. doi:10.1139/apnm-2015-0235
  10. Depino GM, Webright WG, Arnold BL. Duration of maintained hamstring flexibility after cessation of an acute static stretching protocol. Journal of Athletic Training 2000;35(1):56–9. PMID 16558609
  11. Willy RW, Kyle BA, Moore SA, Chleboun GS. Effect of cessation and resumption of static hamstring muscle stretching on joint range of motion. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy 2001;31(3):138–44. doi:10.2519/jospt.2001.31.3.138
  12. Pope RP, Herbert RD, Kirwan JD, Graham BJ. A randomized trial of preexercise stretching for prevention of lower-limb injury. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 2000;32(2):271–7. doi:10.1097/00005768-200002000-00004
  13. Lauersen JB, Bertelsen DM, Andersen LB. The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2014;48(11):871–7. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2013-092538
  14. Freitas SR, Mendes B, Le Sant G, Andrade RJ, Nordez A, Milanovic Z. Can chronic stretching change the muscle-tendon mechanical properties? A review. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports 2018;28(3):794–806. doi:10.1111/sms.12957
  15. Weppler CH, Magnusson SP. Increasing muscle extensibility: a matter of increasing length or modifying sensation?. Physical Therapy 2010;90(3):438–49. doi:10.2522/ptj.20090012

Each address was followed to the record it names before it was written down. Where a paper could not be resolved that way, the page names it in the prose and leaves it unlinked rather than guessing at an address.

One reading is a point. Two are a line.

This page builds one sheet from that catalogue. Limber runs five tests — toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor and deep squat — rolls them into a single 0–100 Range Score, cuts that first score as your datum, and measures every later reading from it. The two wall tests are read in centimetres, the per-side tests keep left and right apart, and areas you never tested stay drawn as untested rather than filled in with a guess.

It works offline and needs no account: your readings stay on the phone.

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What this is

A routine builder, not a plan and not a course. It orders positions out of the app’s own catalogue to fit the minutes you have, and prints them.

It does not know anything about you. It has no reading of your range, so it cannot pick a position for a joint it has not measured — which is what the tests are for, and why they are listed beside every area you tick.

Where the positions come from.

All 56 of them are Limber’s own move catalogue — the same file the app builds a session from, with the same hold lengths, the same instructions and the same note about when to ease off. If a position changes in the app it changes here.

The dose the sheet is built to — the hold, the one repetition, the days a week — is listed with the paper behind each figure at the foot of the page.

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