2017 Front Split Progress Updates - GB Community

In light of @Ryan Bailey's posts regarding his progress in one year's time I thought it'd be a healthy and fun check-in/competition for people to post their progress to start off the New Year. I'll be posting my starting form next week "week 1" and then throughout the year or by NYE 2017, people can update and see where they're at. Here are two links of @Ryan Bailey's progress in case people are skeptical of the payoff that consistency may provide. 

 @Jon Douglas @Alessandro Mainente

Here we go, late night of New Year's Eve… technically, it's the beginning of 2017. My pike today…  (started the FSS on September 3, 2016, four months ago). 

Thanks @Daniel Taylor-Shaut for setting up these pages!!! 

Hello, hope the new year has started out well for all of you. I thought I would give a stiffer picture so that we do not only see all the limber people .

This is from today, I have been doing the stretch series since april 2016 and I have never been able to reach my toes in my entire life (at least not what I remember), I a looking forward to the day I will reach them.

https://youtu.be/ksPwvCWaFzs

Have fun

Johan 

Well, here's week 1. My pike is decent, but my splits got some room to grow. Sadly, these are the 'best' of all three series for me. Best meaning most progressed. Here's to progress...

I'm in and great idea. Been doing the stretch series for about 4 months and lots of improvement but still struggling with a lot of these moves. Looking forward to putting some 'before' pics up soon.

Here's my entry. Did FS yesterday. It's probably my weakest series, and slight left hamstring pain not related to GST got me wary the last couple of months, so slight regression. Hip flexors are just being hip flexors. 

Here we go 2016 after, 2017 before

Here is my entry for the challenge.  As you can see I have a long way to go but it will be fun to see my progress after a year.

Really trying to hold APT here. I can get fingers to toes but have to round my back significantly to do so. 

Joshua Hibbert: your current progress was where I was about 18 months ago, but I couldn't do most of the stretches for about 4 months after a freak knee injury.  So roughly a dedicated year will take you from "as flexible as stone" to "as flexible as oak" 

Great pictures guys!

Looking forward to see you progress  

I will be looking forward to seeing your progress too!

My previous pike picture was from the last day of the last year. Yesterday was my first 2017 FSS session and I thought I'd post a picture of the split like everybody else is doing. I was stretching late at night, my body was tired, my mind was tired, and I managed to relax really nicely. When I was taking the picture and adjusting my posture to have my upper body more vertical, suddenly something clicked… not painful, but a hearable click, and suddenly I could get 2 inches lower and touch the mat completely. Aw, do I love clicks like this? Not sure what it was, but here is my result (left and right side):

@Craig Copeland Oak here I come 

My go. After each FS session I agree wholeheartedly with @Coach- "This stinks!" I 

nice work on front split,guys and girls a little note:

instead of moving down and twist the knee with the natural consequence of loosing the parallelism of the 2 legs please add some cm's to your elevation and square your hips.

Here's my FS progress entry from today

Super late to the party (but it's still January, I'm counting it!). Had a bit of a setback in December with some weirdness in my left hamstring, which, it turns out, stemmed from a glute issue, and is now on a path to resolution. Yay! Back on track with splits, and here is my split while keeping my hips square. 

Goal for 2017 is to get to the floor with square hips and increase my active flexibility.

Nice Julia, looking forward to see your progress! Please keep us posted  

Nice work Julia , I noted that your right hip flexor it is more tight by the fact that your body it is inclined forward. keep the upper body vertical!!!

Hi, silly question - are you all just adding in actual splits after your stretching? I haven't practiced splits since beginning the stretch series as they aren't included in mine so I just figured that was Coach's way of telling me I'm not ready for that position. 

@Katherine Zodiaco, I get into a split occasionally after the stretch series to measure my progress, but I don't dedicate time to it regularly.  

Doesn't hurt to add a little split work into your cool down. 

@Katherine Zodiaco I now do the stretch series on off days after some tinkering with my schedule. I typically will do end positions reflective of that day's training: upper body (bridge, elevated cat, shoulder extension, supine trap, etc.); lower body (front split, pancake, middle split, frog, piriformis, vertical shin, seizas, etc.). So I end up hitting most positions about three times a week: once with each stretch session and then two more times (as I try to do upper and lower twice per week on the four-day split). Works pretty well, so long as my sleep schedule is on-point.