[Music] what is that my warriors and welcome back to another video today we're back with another episode of the do it right series this is a series in which we break down different stretches exercises range of motion we go over what not to do how to do it and then some few variations that you can also try to help vary your stretching exercises today's topic is gonna be on the Jefferson cow as suggested in the previous video if you want to suggest a future topic for the do it right series then feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your suggestions the Jefferson cow is a loaded hamstring stretch and I would actually go so far to say as it's probably one of the best hamstring stretches that you can do and there's many reasons for this is a load of stretch is very effective at building range of motion so it's very useful if you are a beginner but it's also great a strengthening for a full range of motion as well once you have a decent range available to you it's just a really great all-round exercise for various reasons however there are a few do's and don'ts when it comes to the Jefferson Co that I commonly see people make so we're gonna go over now some of the mistakes that are common with the Jefferson curl the first mistake I see people make is they try to treat the Jefferson Co as a little bit of hip hinge when we train hamstring flexibility we need to understand how we hinge at the hips to develop hamstring range of motion however this is not the focus of the Jefferson Co the Jefferson Co is a spinal articulation it is not a hip hinge so if we see somebody doing a Jefferson cow and the first movement is their hips moving back or moving from the lower back then we know they're trying to hip him away into the stretch instead we need to focus on the move coming from the top of the neck and working its way down the spine so we need to have that spinal articulation segment by segment working all the way down curling up until he gets to that bottom end reins position the second mistake that I commonly see of the Jefferson Co is people do not keep their legs straight now this one is really common with hamstring stretching in general you need to keep the legs straight to get the maximum stretch for the Jefferson cow and hamstring stretching in general both the calf and the hamstring crossed the knee joint which means that in order to get the most stretch we must keep the leg locked and straight so that we can then effectively stretch the hamstring this also makes sense if we're trying to take this into any future work if we're just trying to develop a range of motion we're almost cheating ourselves by bending the knee slightly there is a slight difference between bent leg and straight leg hamstring flexibility in the way we train it and also the transfer it has so for this reason we want to make sure that we maintain an active lockout of the leg so to do this just try to think about contracting your quad I can try it in your quad you're gonna almost try to force the leg to go straight but you're also going to help support the knee joint because the core is active the third and final mistake that I commonly see with the Jefferson cow is too much weight too soon now adding weights are stretching loading stretching can be very effective but it needs to be done correctly because if we add too much weight then our body gets used to needing that amount of weight to get into that range of motion let alone the fact that this is a novel stimulus it can be new to some people and we also want to make sure that we load up this slowly and take our time to build up the amount of weight that we can do in a Jefferson cow we always want to use the least amount of weight that we can use to get the response that we need so if you can add 5 or 10 kilos to a stretch and you can actually get a decent response a decent stretch out of it then that's great for the moment as you get more advanced maybe you start adding a little bit more weight maybe you go to 15 kilos or 20 kilos but it's not the sort of thing that I would jump straight into doing bodyweight Jefferson cows it's a great way to one injure yourself and to not get optimal results so take your time to load up slowly now we know not what to do how do we actually do the Jefferson curl and whatever a few modifications that we can make to it to get some different responses out of it number one the Jefferson County just need to think of it as a spinal articulation exercise so standing on an elevation we want to be holding the weight this can be with kettlebells it can be of a barbell if you have a dumbbell you've used to give a plate it doesn't really matter as long as you're holding some form of weight in your hand stand up nice and tall and then you're just gonna tuck the chin and then you can continue to flex your spine trying to wrap vertebrae by vertebrae right down the spine keeping the chin tucked and then going deeper into the stretch eventually you'll end up at the base of the spine and you should be in kind of your max forward fold position holding the weight overhead in this in here we want to try and think about reaching down towards the ground keeping those quads engaged keeping those legs locked hold this position for a few seconds and then we're just going to reverse that motion back up so we need to think about again curling vertically by vertebrae up from the bottom of that stretch and we can repeat this one for about five repetitions adding a slight pause on the last rep so that is the basic Jefferson Co one modification that I really like is adding a slight straddle to this position now we can take the straddle as wide or as narrow as we want but this one is a really great one for transferring over to something like the pancake so we can do a straddle Jefferson Co and we perform it in exactly the same way we just have our legs in a straddled position now this straddle position is going to vary of intensity just make sure that you're having some grippy shoes make sure that you can support yourself comfortably because feeling safe feeling like you're not going to slip out of that position is very important for getting the most out of this exercise and then perform the jousting Co and exactly the same way as we just did but your legs are in straddle as well and this can help with your pancake flexibility but that is kind of basically the Jeff Cinco is a super simple exercise but it's very very effective at building up hamstring flexibility whether you're a beginner or an advanced training if you have any questions about today's video if you want to suggest a future topic for the do it right series why not leave a comment in the comment section down below if you just enjoy this video you can hit that thumbs up button and support the channel right next to it is that subscribe button if you want to join the bodyweight warrior tribe but that has been it for this week guys I will catch you in the next episode have a strong week and peace [Music]