TIPS, TRICKS & HOW-TOs
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TIPS, TRICKS & HOW-TOs
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Splits & Leg Flexibility / Back & Shoulder Flexibility / Beginner-Friendly / Contortion / All Posts
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Earlier this week I wrote about working on hip flexibility for sitting cross-legged more comfortably, so it seemed only fitting to continue this topic further to the next goal some folks sometimes to aspire to: being able to sit in a “full lotus” pose. Both poses are actually quite similar in the ranges of motion required in the hips, but lotus just requires more flexibility in these areas . .
Being able to comfortably sit cross-legged on the floor (aka “criss cross applesauce” as I’m told the cool kids call it these days) can be a frustrating challenge for bodies with tight hips - especially as we get older. Gone are the days of our youth, happily sitting on the floor during story time. Instead, trying to sit on the floor for any extended period of time may now result in a butt cramp or a cranky low back . . .
On the plus side, being able to sit on the floor without a) looking like a hunched over gremlin and b) not incurring nagging pain is a very achievable goal!
For all my runner or cyclist friends out there, here’s a great short stretching routine you can do right after your run/ride that hits the major lower body muscle groups worked: quads, hip flexors, hamstrings, calves, and glutes. You can “choose your own adventure” with this one, either sticking to the more “traditional” passive stretches for a feel-good stretch-out of the areas you just spent a whole workout contracting, or you can choose a more “active flexibility” approach and opt of the variations that include a strengthen-while-you-stretch component to mor effectively work on your flexibility of these areas.
So you’re setting up for your forearm stand: you’ve got your elbows shoulder width apart, forearms firmly pressing into the ground, shoulder shrug muscles engaged! Then you kick your feet up, and oh no - your elbows are slooowly starting to slide out to the sides, no matter how much you squeeze them in! What’s going on?
The “elbow splay” is a challenge many students face, even folks with relatively flexible shoulders. The two biggest reasons this happens are…
A common challenge students run into when wanting to start working on more advanced contortion backbends like chin and chest stands is a lack of neck flexibility and strength. These poses in particular are incredibly demanding on our neck, requiring not only a large amount of cervical extension (aka “arching/backbending through the neck”) to begin with, but also an incredible amount of strength in these muscles to keep the neck safe in these poses when you have a large portion of your bodyweight potentially smooshing down into your neck in a precariously arched position.
Being able to touch your toes to the back of your head in a backbend (like in King Cobra pose or King Pigeon pose) is a fun flexibility goal to work towards because: a) it looks cool, and b) it encourages you to work on backbending flexibility through the full backbending chain. So you can’t (usually) get away with just having a bendy lower back, you need to work on the whoooooole length of your body to build up the flexibility (and strength!) to be able to pull those feet all the way to tickle your head.