What is a Curl-Up?

Having the upper abdominal strength to curl your head and upper body out of bed of off the coach is an important milestone to reach for long-term injury management for neck and low back pain.  A Curl-up (aka crunches) is a safe way to strengthen your upper abdominals.  The key for protecting your low back is maintaining a Pelvic Curl, the key to protecting your neck is to maintain a “Head-up”.

1. Pro-roller Arch

Place your pro-roller arch under your skull at the apex of your occiput to provide a counterforce for maintaining a Head Nod.  A head nod is when you rock your skull back on C1 into its neutral position.

1. Pelvic Curl

Perform 4 pelvic curls before starting your head ups to make sure you are completely flattening your back.  Maintain the pelvic curl throughout each curl-up.  The pelvic curl keeps your lumbar spine in neutral alignment.

1. Head-ups

A head-up consists of rotating your skull posteriorly on C1 past its neutral position (Head Nod).  This ensures that you don’t slide into forward head posture during the curl-up which can throw your neck out of alignment.  Perform 4 head-ups before starting your curl-ups.  Maintain a head-ups throughout each curl-up.

1. Curl-ups

A curl-up is when your upper abdominals flex your upper spine (neck and upper thoracic) and head as one unit when laying supine (on your back).  We teach it, as with all exercises laying on your back with the pro-roller arch under your skull.  We will provide verbal cues to smile throughout the curl-up to keep jaw and neck muscles relaxed.

1. Roll down

Segmentally roll down out of your curl-up from the lower thoracic spine into the mid thoracic spine back to supine laying.  Controlling the roll-down is just as important as controlling the curl-up.

You know you’re performing this exercise properly when you feel your upper abdominals flex your upper body without strain in your neck muscles.

Levels of Progression:

• Hold a perfect head up for 12 seconds (level 5)
• Perform 8 perfect Curl-ups with a 1, 2, 3 tempo of control
• Hold a perfect curl-up for 12 seconds (level 6)
• Perform 4 heel floats from a sustained perfect curl-up (Level 7).

Summary:

Conditioning yourself to do a healthy curl-up is not just a key fitness milestone, it provides you a safe movement strategy to get out of beck and a reclined position without faulty loading in your neck and low back.  There are 3 key sub-milestones that must be reached before you are performing a perfect curl-up.  Don’t skip a step and you will be on your way to 6-pack abs in no time.

Safe Progressions:

When you can perform a 12 second head-up, start doing curl-ups maintaining a head-up.  When you can hold a perfect curl-up for 12 seconds start adding heel floats.

Don’t forget to use the SafeProgress feature within the PostureIQ dashboard to let us confirm your are doing your exercises properly.