Middle Split Struggles

Hi there,

I did the middle split routine for the first time. I want to emphasize very strongly that I am incredibly non-mobile in certain ways in my lower body. It is drastic. (Ironically, my upper body is gumby. Go figure.)

Let me paint a picture for you. If you hold up a "peace sign" with the first two fingers of your hand, that is my straddle. Try to stretch your pointer and middle fingers farther apart from each other. That is the amount of flexibility my legs have outward. 

Additionally, when asked to do a pancake, I am about 9" from my toes, with my upper body curved, but stillnearly upright the whole time. 

I believe you would label this as someone like me as someone with very little mobility and tight in the hamstrings and quads and calves and made of cement. Hahahaha. In one sense, I get that I'm potentially the perfect candidate for this course.

All this to say, doing this middle split routine was heart pounding, sweat dripping difficult, with lots of failure. "To prove my willingness to push myself", I want to share that I regularly went to the gym 5 days per week in 2017 (January through July, took a long break due to work and travel, just started back up). I am accustomed to difficulty. My impression, though, is that this routine is intended for someone more flexible than I am. I watched "Orange" (who Mr. Sommers mentioned had made progress but still had places to go) get mostly the positions he was asked to do without sweating. Meanwhile, I'm failing over and over and over and quitting as there's no way I could achieve what he's asking.

I can pinpoint why, in many cases: 

1. The stretches Mr. Sommers is offering utilize a lot of body support with the ground, so they're not all that difficult. Because of how inflexible I am, I have very little contact with the ground, all of my body weight is on one small pressure point on, say, my knee (instead of my whole leg, like the folks in the video).
2. Or, when he has them sit in straddle, then lean over on top of their legs (to grab their foot, or further if they can). When I do that stretch, I am a good 30" from my foot!!!!!
3. Or when he has them in straddle, walking across the floor with their hands? Forget about it! That whole series of workouts is laughably hard for me!!!

Is there an alternative workout for someone like me?? I feel like there has got to be a middle ground, one step less workout than this. Thoughts?

Hi Leigh,

Thanks for reaching out to us and welcome to GymnasticBodies!

Firstly, you are not alone starting off like a brick with these series. Improving flexibility is a process which require patience and consistency.

in order to give you any specific advices for the exercises I would highly recommend to submit photos/videos of the exercises. This way our feedback can be as accurate as possible. please have a look at the technical tip instructions in your Course Library as well, for all the straddle exercises you can sit on an elevated surface such as a box or a bench  

Looking forward to hear back from you and help you along your Middle Split journey  

 

Leigh: what you are describing about yourself was me 3 years ago when I started.  I’m still laughably immobile but much better than I was. There are modifications for each of the stretches for concrete people like us — check the course library:  the modifications are in there somewhere, including suggestions for, say, sitting up on blocks for some stretches. Search the forum for help with specific exercises. And good luck!

I m doing all the pancake work standing because no matter how many blocks I use I can t keep apt. So I would have to sit on a chair what is pretty awful and puts a lot of tension in the back of my knees. Instead of that I decided to do all the pancake work standing. If you are very far from a 90° angle standing  pancake with anterior pelvic tilt, let s say 120° or above that, then you better work standing. But this is my personal experience. This also applies to pike work.

I am not very flexible myself, but one thing that has helped me is measuring my progress every few months. These small gains are an incentive to keep pushing towards the ultimate goal. Any time I start to feel impatient I have to remind myself that I spent most of life not stretching very much, so it will take time to undue that tightness. As Coach Sommer says blocks and straps are your friends, use them! Video form checks are also useful and provide a method for measuring progress. Good luck with your journey, and keep pushing!