The Lazy Person’s Guide to Staying Flexible

The best one-minute movements to keep you mobile and pain-free with minimal effort.

We all know the feeling: you’ve been sitting at your desk for hours, hips tighter than your jeans after a particularly good Sunday roast, shoulders hunched like Gollum over your desk. You know you should probably move, but who’s got time or energy for a full yoga session?

Enter these one-minute wonders. They’re quick, no-fuss, and designed to sneak into your day without disrupting your flow.

Because the deal is, my friend, if we don’t do something about your tight hips, your complete lack of spinal mobility, your neck issues, the stiffness in your hamstrings, or that horrible feeling of having to sit on the floor and wondering how you’ll ever get up again…

…you’ll reach your 70’s with a complete inability to move as you do now, and maybe even a ‘crumbling spine’, (something the doctors have lovingly diagnosed my 90-year-old grandma with; a woman who helped build the coolest (as far as I’m concerned) fish-and-chip empire in Hull and beyond in the 70s and 80s, but who was also never really introduced to movement as a thing do stay strong and healthy. Obviously. It was the 70s. Online yoga was but a dream).

When I’m in my 70’s I want to be keeping up with life. And I know you want this, too.

So let’s let that be the drive, not to be ‘good at yoga’, but to be prepping for our old-people bodies.

With that in mind, here’s how to move to undo the kinks and get feeling good again in just seven minutes (or one, if that’s all you’ve got). Do them in order, and you’ve a mini practice you can take with you anywhere.

If you want to follow along with me, scroll to the end for a 12-minute video practice—it’s one of my favourites: Yoga For Your Spine.