The Jefferson Curl

This is a great piece if you have tight hips. The compensations that occur with tight anterior hips is a lumbar extension fault. The Jefferson curl will help you improve your lumbar flexion and is great to pair with hip extension flexibility like the past 3 days.

You can perform this on flat ground or if you have more flexibility, you can raise yourself up on a platform. You will want to keep your legs as straight as possible and try to segment the spine as you move through forward flexion. This means you will curl forward every spinal segment one at a time starting with the neck and working your way down all the way to the lumbar spine. You will bend forward as far as you can keeping your chin tucked. I like to hold for a second at the bottom to feel a stretch all the way through the back my legs and up my entire spine. As you come back up, you want to reverse the movement so your lumbar spine moves first, then the thoracic, then the cervical spine. Move slow and controlled, no need to rush this movement.

While this can be done with weight, I dont recommend it unless you have perfectfedthe movement without added weight. Most people are deconditioned or untrained in this movement. That is one reason why people have injured their lower back bending over to tie their shoe or pick up something that weighs very little.

Let me know how it goes or if you have any questions.