The evening is the easiest stretching session to keep up, for a dull reason: the day is finished, so nothing is competing with it.
Here are five that suit the end of the day, and the one category to leave out.
Why evening works better than morning for most people
Three practical reasons, none of them physiological.
The cue is reliable. "Before bed" happens every day whether you plan it or not, which is more than can be said for 6:40am.
Your muscles have just spent hours held at one length, so the contrast is obvious and the session feels worth doing.
And nothing is after it. A morning routine competes with leaving the house. An evening one competes with a phone.
On the physiology, be sceptical of strong claims. Plenty of articles assert that stretching improves sleep. We are not going to tell you that, because it is a claim about your body that we are not in a position to make. What we can say is that these five are slow, floor-based, and do not raise your heart rate.
The five, in order
Head down to hips, finishing on your back.
- Neck Side Bend. Sitting, drop one ear towards the same shoulder. Thirty seconds each side. Let the weight of your head do it.
- Child's Pose. Knees wide, big toes together, sit back towards your heels and let your forehead rest down. Forty-five seconds. Put a cushion under your hips if they do not reach.
- Happy Baby. On your back, knees wide, holding the outside of each foot. Forty-five seconds. More of a settle than a stretch.
- Knee-to-Chest. Draw one knee in at a time, then both. Forty seconds each side.
- Supine Twist. Knees over to one side, shoulders staying down, head turned the other way. Fifty seconds each side. This is the one to finish on, and the one to keep if you only do one.
Total, about four minutes. All of it works on carpet. None of it needs a mat.
What to leave out in the evening
Not everything belongs here.
Long, deep end-range work. Pushing into an unfamiliar range is stimulating, and it is harder to judge how far is sensible when you are tired.
Anything that needs balance. Standing quad stretches and single-leg work are fine in daylight. Last thing at night, on a dark landing, they are a trip hazard.
Backbends. Camel pose and bridge pose are good stretches at the wrong time of day for this purpose.
Anything that gets your heart rate up. If you are breathing harder, it has stopped being a wind-down.
How long to hold, and how often
Thirty to fifty seconds per stretch is plenty. The 2025 Sports Medicine meta-analysis of 189 studies and 6,654 adults found thirty-second holds matching sixty-second ones, and found gains across a week flattening at around ten minutes per muscle group, regardless of whether those minutes came in three sessions or six.
Which means an evening routine on most days is a perfectly efficient way to do it. And on the days you skip it, nothing is undone. There is no streak here to break.
When to stop, and when to ask someone
Stretching is general fitness, not treatment. Stop anything that produces pain, dizziness, numbness or anything that feels wrong.
Talk to a doctor or physiotherapist first if you have a back or joint problem, recent surgery, or if you are pregnant or recently postpartum: lying twists and knees-to-chest are positions worth asking about specifically in that case. Our fitness and safety note has the rest.
Where Lucy fits
Lucy is an iPhone app of short guided stretching routines for people who sit all day. Wind Down for Sleep is four minutes and five stretches, and it is exactly the five above. Nothing in it raises your heart rate and all of it happens on the floor.
The timer counts each hold and cues the side changes, so you can keep your eyes closed. Every duration can be shortened before you start.
One routine is free in full. The rest is a subscription with a 7-day free trial, priced in your own currency on the App Store.
FAQ
Is it good to stretch before bed?
It is a common and comfortable time to do it, and the evidence on dose says the time of day does not change what you get from the minutes. Whether it affects your sleep is a claim we are not going to make. If sleep is the problem you are trying to solve, that is a conversation for a professional.
Should you stretch before or after a shower?
After is more comfortable, because warm tissue is more pleasant to stretch. It is a comfort preference rather than a performance one, and not a reason to skip a session.
How long should an evening stretching routine be?
Four or five minutes covers it. The Sports Medicine review found gains within a single session flattening at roughly four minutes per muscle group, so a short sequence across a few areas is well matched to that.
Can you do these in bed?
Child's pose and happy baby work on a firm mattress. A soft one lets your hips sink and the twist loses its point. The floor beside the bed is better, and a rug is enough.
What if you fall asleep halfway through?
Then it worked out. Nothing about this needs finishing, and the app lets you leave any routine part-way through without recording it as a failure.
Lucy runs this as an evening routine you can start and then stop thinking about.