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Anyone achieved splits success from scratch?
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Hehe, seems like a lot of us haven't gotten the splits, and I am one of them, too!
I don't have any kind of dance, or even fitness background…mostly a video game nerd through life, and when I ended up having injured knees, it just got worse. Now, the knees are getting better, I'm more active, and those splits are gonna have to come sometime!
My hip flexors are actually pretty good, but it's my hamstrings I have to work on. They're SO tight, I could barely get my hands past my knees without rounding my back. So, since physiotherapy, I've gotten some exercises to try, and they've been doing great things! I can touch the floor! :O
So, with hope, I can extend it all the way to doing the splits, at least forwards. I'm having issues with the side splits, but they'll come in time. I'm not as dilligent as I'd like to be, but hopefully that changes soon!
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I got my front splits on both sides for the first time in my life at the age of 24 🙂 Took me about 2 months. I used the 6 weeks program but I added some more stretches to it and some variations of the stretches in it because I didn't think that those 6 stretches were enough for me. I stretched about 6 days a week for 30 to 90 minutes. After finally got the splits I couldnt do them for days afterwards and it was really frustrating. But now that I think of it and after reading more about this it might be because I was doing really intense and deep stretching many days in a row. It might have been better to do heavy stretching 3-4 times a week and light stretching in the days between.
I higly recommend the pigeon pose and the king pigeon pose. Its the best stretch ever! And I started progressing faster when I added them to my stretching routine. 🙂
The frog stretch I like also. And just add any stretch that you know of that stretch your hamstrings, quadriceps, hips and calfs. Oh yea. Stretching the calfs helps to! I didnt figure that out at first but it really does held i think. 🙂
Now I maintain the splits with a short (10-15min) but good stretching routine about 3 times a week. But they are unreliable but I can do them most of the time 🙂 I am planning on starting to stretch more often now because I want oversplits. 🙂
Good luck! 🙂
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I have no dance or gymnastics background, except for ballet when I was 5. And I distinctly remember that even then I couldn't do a full split. However, after alot of practice (for pole), now I have my front split on both sides, though I'm working on getting into them more quickly! I even have a slight oversplit now (have to be really warm though)- working on making that better too. As for side splits, I'm still about 5 inches off the ground, but getting there….. It's always a work in progress, right? I definitely think my pain threshold has gone up since starting pole.
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I just read this interesting article about how Felix Cane reccomends stretching for splits:
http://www.candy-chrome.co.uk/pole-dance-mag/splits-training-exercisesfor-pole-dance-felix-cane/
I look forward to giving the exercises a try.
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@ Masked Loopy – Thank you for sharing!! There are PICTURES! Very helpful!! ^_^
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I did! … then I lost it lol. It took me nearly 2 years to successfully get down into my front splits but I wasn't stretching constantly at that time (by that I mean stretching regularly/consistently). I did start stretching every other day about a year ago and could comfortably do dance splits (back knee to the side/hip turned out) and was working on my 'true' splits (knee facing down/hips down). I got as far as oversplits to about 5 inches above the floor and was able to split and bend my back leg up and was verrrrry close to my middle splits………. until I hurt my hamstring and been thrown back in my practice ;_;
so keep on practising you can get there with determination! and don't overdo it or you'll set yourself back months like me 🙁 btw I started when i was 22 (I'm 24 now) and never done gymnastics/dance/anything sporty (I had no interest in sports AT ALL til pole) so it can be done! And I am not naturally flexy, I had to work really really hard to get my splits but the results are worth it 😀
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@ Masked Loopy,
Thanks for the link, I have not seen that particular stretch sequence. Going to try it!
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i have been doing Bikram Yoga for 5 years, which helped to loosen my hamstrings and hip flexors significantly. I started my splits work on May 7.
I use a resistance band to help, called the Flexistretcher. It is wonderful. Here's the link for it: http://www.flexistretcher.com/flexistretcher.html
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I've got my side splits in a month. I can do it only after good warm up
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I started working on stretching recently. I can't do a split, but left leg is quite a bit more flexible than the right, I guess it has to do which side I tend to use to do certain poses a lot. I just want to share that in the past I never stretched because I thought there was no hope for me to achieve splits. But two years later I was surprised to see that my flexibily has improved quite a bit although I didn't intentially work on it. So now I really want to improve it even further now so maybe one day I can do a split! Being flexible is such an advantage when it comes poling.
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