Leaning forward, Butterfly vs Pancake

When I do the butterfly stretch, I can get my feet fairly close to my groin and my knees fairly close to the ground.  If I grab my toes I can easily pull my knees to the ground.  I sit in this position a lot and find it comfortable.  That said, I can barely lean forward, and I don't know what's stopping me.

When I do the pancake, I can get quite low.  With back straight I can touch my elbows down and if I arch I can easily get my forehead to the floor.  When I do this, though, I feel the stretch in my inner thigh quite strongly.  I feel almost nothing in the butterfly, neither sitting nor leaning forward.  If I wait long enough I feel a slight sensation in the groin area, but I think that's just muscle fatigue from pulling the knees down.

So my question, what changes when one leans forward in butterfly vs the pancake?  Why does one feel like a good stretch while the other feels almost nothing?  And is there any supplementary exercises or material I could do to help?  Thanks.

Tight groin (butterfly) vs tight adductors (pancake).

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Sensei JP said:

When I do the butterfly stretch, I can get my feet fairly close to my groin and my knees fairly close to the ground.  If I grab my toes I can easily pull my knees to the ground.  I sit in this position a lot and find it comfortable.  That said, I can barely lean forward, 

 

I feel the exact same.

I tried these sitting on an elevated surface (about 2 inches), this helped a bit. 

I can't lean forward to save my life!   

JonathanSilverman said:

I can't lean forward to save my life!   

As Mats already mentioned, elevate those hips anywhere from 6"-24" until you find the height that works for you.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

But if one just kept at it without the height advantage would improvement be realized? I'm having the same problem but all the vids you say to look at this as longterm improvement. What about maybe holding a light weight out front or pull on a strap in front to help pull forward? I'll keep at it with my limited range as long as I'm not wasting my time by not adjusting it in some way. Just curious thanks....

I've used a yoga strap to increase my ROM. I've also raised my hips about 3"- 4"  

These are all experiments.  I might try to raise my hips slightly higher text time, and use no strap.  

I'm not trying to get to full ROM tomorrow, but I feel like I'm not being productive sitting there with zero ROM.  

Same here. The butterfly is one of the only stretches where I seem to be making no progress at all. I can also sit in the position, feet together, knees near the ground but I simply cannot lean forward at all. I'm not even sure what the limiting factor is.

Did anyone make any progress in the meantime? And if so, what strategies did you use?

If you are not feeling it is usually because the pelvis is sitting in posterior tlit with the sacrum (bit between the tailbone and lumnpbar joints) leaning back. The short adductors cause the pelvis to tilt back and it is really hard to tilt the pelvis forward, which allows the lean forward.

Sit on a block/cushion at a height where you can tilt the pelvis forwards. You can feel this movement by placing the hand on the sacrum. You should be at a height where you can move from posterior to anterior so you feel the stretch in the short adductors.

Make sure you do not lift the ribs away from the pelvis as you will be tricking yourself by moving the back rather than stretching the short adductors.

Hmm, interesting, thanks for that, Mark.

I've been making slow progress on the butterfly, or at least I thought I was.  I am now leaning forward more, that's for sure, but after reading your post I wonder if I'm just moving my back instead of getting any sort of hip stretch.  On the other hand, I used to feel nothing, but now I feel a little something, which seems like a good thing.

By comparison, my pancake has improved tremendously, far faster than my butterfly.  I always thought it was because we only do the butterfly twice, whereas we do several pancake stretches and generally stay in this position far more.

I haven't been elevating my hips previously for the butterfly.  I wasn't aware that this would help.  I've simply held the butterfly stretch for two minutes, spending longer in it, and I often feel myself lowering down during the entire time.  I also sometimes do it with back flat against a wall, as I often it more intensely like that.

You are just rounding your back to get forward.

The good news is at least your knees are relatively close to the floor.

If you have stall bars, or something else to grab onto, try holding the stall bars in butterfly and use that to help get leverage to your hips.

Cole Dano said:

You are just rounding your back to get forward.

The good news is at least your knees are relatively close to the floor.

What should you do if you cannot even get your knees close to the floor? Should the focus of this stretch be to get the knees down first? Or should the emphasis be on the elevation of the hips and the subsequent arched forward lean?

If you look at the pelvis in the butterfly you can see that there is no anterior tilt. With the pancake you have anterior tilt of the pelvis.

Thank you, Mark and Cole.  Without your input I never would have figured this out... which is hilarious, as I've done variations of the butterfly stretch for the last 16 years. 

After playing around briefly, I've found that if I move my feet further out, I can engage some pelvic tilt.  I cannot do that with my feet as close as possible.  Or, to be more accurate, trying to get any pelvic tilt naturally causes me feet to go away.  On my next stretch session, I'll test sitting higher, grabbing bars for leverage and other tips to see what hits the spot best.

Great stuff guys, this helps me. Thanks JP for putting yourself out there and GBs for responding.

Really helpful thread. It actually happens the same to me and all this information is very useful.

Now I know more about how to do it and how to focus more in tilting the pelvis.

But, actually, in this case:

1. what are the name of the muscles that are allowing you to go down and correctly tilt pelvis for pancake?

2. and what are the name of those that are not allowing you tilt correctly the pelvis on the butterfly?

(I understand that answer for n.1 would be adductors...?...., but for n.2 also? )

I'm no official word on this subject, but I'd say it is the greater degree of external rotation at the hip required to properly perform a butterfly stretch which is preventing your pelvis from being able to rotate into an APT position.

So most likely the same muscles, you are just stressing the external rotation ROM more in the butterfly stretch.

Even if it is not official word, it makes sense because the knees are obviously external rotated more in the butterfly.

If the same muscles are the adductors, maybe it is because they are more ready to open than rotate.

Although, I know many people that are the same kind of flexible in both positions.

So, maybe it just eans we have to work harder for buttrfly!! Haha

Seems reasonable. I have a fairly strong pancake but still have to elevate to get the correct stretch in butterfly. I was surprised how high I had to go initially.