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Straddle stretch and slight pain in knee
Ever since I was a kid doing gymnastics for fun, I’ve have slight pain in the inside of my right knee when I do the straddle stretch. To avoid hurting myself I’ve been not pushing myself in this stretch. But I really want to get my side splits back this year, i"m so very close. It doesn’t hurt all the time, some days I can go into a very wide straddle easily with no pain at all. Other days, I just sit in a V and it hurts. Sometimes, it hurts and then I’ll readjust my leg wider or narrower and it’ll go away. I make sure I"m on my sits(?) bone and my pelvis is not tucked in. It only happens with this stretch and I don’t really notice the pain any other time.
What am I doing wrong? Is this something I should worry about?
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4 Replies
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if its hurting like that even when you are sitting in just a V you really should see a doctor. its most likely not the stretch you are doing but something wrong with your knee and its best to get it checked out so you dont accidentally injure it more. Knees are very important to keep safe too cause alot of the time, if you hurt it, it never fully gets better https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif
be safe and i hope you stop hurting!
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I’m not sure if it is the same thing but when I practice my side splits by either just holding myself up as I try and go into them or with my butt to the wall and letting gravity help pull open my straddle the inside back (so if my knees were touching the back part closest to the other knee) of both my knees hurt if I hold it more than 10 seconds. The pain goes away after about 30 seconds to a min after I get out of the stretch but it is not fun (hence why my center splits are so far from the ground). It doesn’t happen on my front and back splits unless I put the back knee to the side.
For me I found that turning my knees up instead of forward helps but I know it is possible to do it with the knees forward (on at least one leg) because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to rotate between the various splits when you’re really flexible.
So I’m not much help but I am sure some of the people that know more about anatomy and such will chime in and be all sorts of useful.
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While I won’t go as far as to try and figure out what the cause could be, I’ve found that if I’ve got twinging/twitching muscles/ligaments/tissue etc while I’m stretching, its helps if I warm them up by the contract/resistant stretching that was talked about here a while ago.
So, as FreeTheSun suggested, rather than do the stretch sitting down, instead lie on your back, put your legs in straddle above you, and instead of just pulling your legs down towards the floor as the normal stretch, try resisting that movement by contracting all the muscles along your inner legs first. If you repeat this 7-8 times you’ll find your muscles will feel a lot looser and more warmed up, in prep for pushing your flexibility a bit more.
I think this is a mashup of that guy’s stretching theory (y’know, whatshisname https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif ) and that other stretching theory (the acronym of which also eludes me in my afternoon head-fog)
*Hopefully* this will put a bit less pressure on the area of your knee that you’re feeling the injury in.
In the meantime I would recommend seeing at least a physio to make sure you’re not exacerbating a potentially bad injury
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I tried this stretch on my back today and I didn’t feel any knee pain. I couldn’t quite get into as deep a straddle though and I"m not sure if my position is correct. I think I"ll continue my stretches on the floor and IF it hurts I"ll do it on my back. Thanks.
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