– Have you ever had a tight or stiff lower back, or has your back ever been thrown out? Hey, y’all, KJ Simpson here, I help people cultivate energy, restore balance, and live a life of abundance from the inside out. Today I’m going to show you the five best and easiest lower back stretches that you can do in five minutes. Exercise number one is gonna be the hip twist, and we’re gonna do this quite simply by putting our legs out in front of us. You always wanna remember good posture. Wanna do now is just gently go back and forth, placing your hands to the left and right of our hips. You might be wondering, okay, when do I start stretching, because obviously, you might think this is not stretching, but it is stretching. We call this active stretching, and what it does, is it gets you active, but as you can see, I am stretching out my lower spine, lower back, and also my entire upper body here, so what I want you to do is repeat that for about ten repetitions, five each side, and then hold it here for about ten seconds. When you finish that, want you to go to the next side and hold that for ten. This is a passive stretch, and this is where we’re actually holding that stretch or a static stretch, we’re holding it for a certain amount of seconds, but I’d really like to mix it up and have active and static, because the two of those work really well, they help each other. We’re gonna continue with that method as we go into the next one here. This is called the rock a baby, and this is a favorite of one of mine because it’s like rocking myself to sleep essentially. So I’ll get you to do is bring your knees up to your chest, laying flat on your back. You can do this one leg at a time if you like. First what I want you to do is just grab the back of your leg, this essentially stretches out the hamstring, now, when our hamstring, this muscle here, when they get tight, they also can cause lower back pain, so we wanna be flexible, not just in our lower back, but also in the back of our legs, so just grab the back of your leg here and pull it forward. You wanna maximize that stretch, just put your foot up in the air, and again, you can do this one at a time. Just hold that static stretch there for about ten seconds. After you’ve done both legs, it’s grab both knees and I want you to start rocking yourself, ever so gently, for about ten repetitions, and you’re essentially rolling on your lower lumbar and it just feels great. Sometimes you’ll hear some crackling, some popping, and you might be a little frightened but all that is, essentially, is your back and your vertebra, your spine, adjusting itself and getting back into the formation and the third stretch I’m gonna show you here is the corkscrew. It’s my absolute favorite, I would have to say that with all the lower back problems that I’ve had, that this particular stretch has been my saving grace, it’s really helped me out, and it feels awesome. This is something that I do every day, every workout, looks like this. Lay flat on your back, what I’m gonna get you to do is bring your feet flat on the floor, knees together, hands out to the side, just rock your knees to one side, ever so gently, and then drop them back to the next side. So essentially what we’re doing here again is more of an active stretch, we’re warming up that lower lumbar, also your hips, and then what we’re gonna do is after about ten repetitions, just hold it there for about ten seconds on one side. What I’m trying to do is keep my upper body on the mat, trying to keep my shoulders flat. You’re gonna have a tendency, as your knees drop to one side, the shoulder, the opposite shoulder is gonna wanna pop up. Wanna bring it down so it’s nice and flat. You wanna maximize that stretch. So that’s the corkscrew. Number four is the swan stretch. This was a stretch that they used in karate, still to this day actually. Looks like this, so what I’ll get you to do is keep your hips flat on the mat, so the starting point would be elbows bent, slight arch in your lower back. Make sure that you don’t hyper extend too far. You always wanna remember, when you’re doing your stretches, you wanna make sure that you’re doing them comfortably. You wanna be in touch with your body. Your body will let you know when you’re going too far and you never wanna overstretch, and one of the reasons why I tell you to have an active stretch, what I’m doing right now, is it really prevents that, you really get that comfortable range of motion. You’ll find how flexible or even how inflexible you are at this point in time anyway just by we’re doing about ten repetitions and then holding it to that point where you feel the stretch, where you’re not going beyond the pain point, where it’s not good pain anymore, it’s that bad pain where you’re risking injury. So just hold this swan stretch, and then we’re gonna go into number five. This one here, we’re gonna work on the hip flexor, it’s called the hip flexor stretch. Now, mentioned that the hamstrings have a lot to do with your lower back. Your hamstrings are tight, you might be also experiencing tightness in your lower back or even some pain in your lower back. Same thing with these hip flexors, these deep muscles in our core of our hip, they tend to get really tight, especially because we do a lot of sitting. We’re very sedentary. What I’ll get you to do here is with one leg forward, knee directly across or perpendicular to your ankle, the second knee all the way back, so if you can stretch forward, and where you’ll feel that stretch is all the way down this opposite leg. It’s in more importantly the hip flexor region. You just want to activate it, actively stretch it, get that range of motion, feeling where that bottom point for you is, that stretching point, and then hold it there for ten seconds. You’re gonna wanna do this for both legs. Again, ten repetitions for the stretches you can do actively, and holding those for ten seconds each side, it can all be wrapped up in five minutes, and that is my challenge to you, and if you wanna take that challenge, just comment below. Please like and share this video, and until the next video, my friends, you just keep on aspiring to aspire.