standing leg raise

This is no phenomenon. When there is muscle bulk getting in the way its pretty hard to impossible to do much about it aside from reducing it. Muscle bulk is a flexibility limiting factor simply because of the muscle mass getting in the way. Only real thing you can do (without reducing the mass) is to try to teach them (athletes) to relax the quad on the front leg to hopefully allow for the muscle to be displaced a little allowing for more compression.

it is common for the hip flexor to hurt in splits. its a good thing, it means they are maintaining pretty decent alignment in the split and are not cheating it (its an assumption made without actually seeing it, but it seems to me that you know what good alignment is so thus i make this assumption). When you say "pull the leg bent all the way up to their chest " do you mean with their arms or actively without arms. I would recommend that you add in your stretches a Thomas stretch kinda like in the photo

but you want to have the bottom of your glut muscle just on the edge of the table, and keep a straight leg. A partner can gently help by putting pressure on the middle of the straight leg thigh, while ensuring that the person getting stretched is keeping the knee into their chest, and both hips are down and they are trying to press their lower back in to the table.

The hips rolling at the bottom of squats can also be the result of

1- weak core

2- tight Achilles tendons

3- tight hamstrings.

Coach, how often would you have the trainee perform the leg lift routine you described?

Many thanks for the info!

Currently my athletes perform them 1-2 times per week.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Spanyard said:

...and when you extend the leg sideways, toes must be pointing up? Thanks.

Can anyone answer this please?

Aesthetically, flexing the foot is not preferred but when flexing your foot during a split or pike stretch, you do get a better stretch.

Actually, I think the question is about pelvic alignment. In order to do a side split, your pelvis needs to tilt forward. This either means your need to tilt forward and arch the back, or rotate the thighs.

Here is an article by Thomas Kurz about this very topic. To quote the relevant paragraph:

Thomas Kurz said:

Note that in doing a side split with toes pointing forward you not only spread the legs sideways, but also tilt the pelvis forward. In a side split with the feet pointing up, you keep your pelvis straight but rotate the thighs outward. The alignment of the hips and thighs in both types of the side splits is the same.

I understood the question to be if the toes point up or forward. The Kurtz post should shed some light on that.

Keeping the hips neutral i the side extension, the toes will point up.

The position of the toe (flexed or pointed) is irrelevant; however the knee should be pointing to the ceiling during the extension of the leg sideways.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

That's super helpful coach, thanks much. I was doing a traditional martial arts sidekick position. Always look forward to practicing things with new found correctness.

Sorry for adding to any confusion, i should have referred to the direction the knee points, like Coach Sommer did.

Coach, so whenever I train my sidesplits (passive stretching), my knee has to point to the ceiling? Or only when I do the hip extensions? I find that training sidesplits by myself with the knee pointing to the ceiling is quite uncomfortable and awkward :shock: :cry: