Splits Practice: learn how to do splits and techniques to go deeper

I'm Cathy Madeo here today with the Flitz tutorial it's probably the most requested thing that I get on Instagram aside from handstands so I wanted to make this content for you I'm going to show you my favorite poses and some stretching techniques and while we stretch and hold poses I'll be talking a lot about flexibility so go ahead and take our first pose which is lizard lunge so you'll place one foot in front and move it over to the side edge of your mat and what you want to focus on here is not just the front leg while that is definitely opening in the hip and the inner thigh we want to also focus on the back leg so think of the back leg and your lizard lunge as your back leg and your split and so the back leg here is stretching your hip flexors I'm so I'm intentionally holding you here so I want you to stay here and then you can start to work your way down onto your forearms now you don't even have to do that you could stay up but we'll go ahead and come down we're still holding and that back leg is nice and extended behind your hips and so as you hold this pose you'll notice I am kind of moving around just a little bit that was a game changer for me and my flexibility when we hold poses statically meaning we don't move we're not kind of getting all of the nuances of the various muscles that cross the hip joint so I welcome and invite these kind of small movements I'm rocking my pelvis a little bit side to side I'm even letting my left knee go out a little bit side to side that's my bent knee I flipped my camera so that I could make sure everything was going okay so I think that my body is opposite of what I'm actually saying but you'll follow along okay let's take one more breath here and now we'll walk our hands up and heel-toe your left foot over to the left and straighten your front leg so this is runner stretch so if it's hard to straighten your front leg I want you to grab two blocks or whatever you're using at home and be more upright here and you know there's different ways to do this pose some people bring their hips back I want your hips up so that they're right over your back knee and flex your front foot so that you're stretching your calf muscle on the Achilles heel even the sole of the foot a little bit so I'm going to lower my or release my blocks here the other thing is is if you're here and your arms are bent but you're on your fingertips just go ahead and bring your palms down start working your palms down I'll pull your left hip back and drag isometrically your left heel back so isometrically means you might not see anything move it's a kind of tension you're creating through the muscles and then we can release the head a full hold breathe in here and then we're just gonna switch sites so right foot forward taking that lizard lunge and you'll notice I don't go directly down into my forearms I'm giving my body a chance to open and this is the other thing I want to share with you about flexibility you really want to ease into the poses because flexibility is more about your mind and your mind sending signals to the rest of your body that it's safe so if we kind of like force right into the final look of this pose which might be down here we might actually be counterproductive sending signals of stress to our body and then the muscles tense up where we want them to release and stretch so you'll see I'm rocking my hips this way a little bit this way I'm letting even my bent knee go out to the side you'll notice my voice is calm my breath is calm no deep breathing here it's all about the mind with flexibility so I'm integrating many different flexibility methods here as we move some of them I'm pointing out and others I'm not I'm go ahead and we'll walk up and we'll take that runners stretch remember feel free to use your blocks and I probably should have told you all write it in the description that if you have the blocks I want you to make sure you have them for this tutorial so we'll be doing a pee enough stretching and a few moments good so we'll go ahead and fold I am being a little active here I'm really dragging my right heel back pulling my right hip back you can even inhale half-lift exhale fold good and then wall band will step forward and take forward fault so splits are not just about the hamstrings we're stretching the whole kind of back line of our legs for that front leg and the front of the leg for the back leg so we've really got to do kind of a lot of work if we want to go deep the more you can compress the front line here the more the back line will stretch okay from here inhale half-lift step your left foot back and we're taking pyramid pose again you can use your blocks here so still stretching kind of this front leg here I'm just pulling this hip back a little deeper good and then we'll walk the hands to the inside let the hips go a little bit out to the side so again not being static in our poses for this kind of posture splits is a complex pose it's and of all of the muscles that cross the hip joint are involved step forward and we'll just switch sides get them regretting not putting my hair up that's okay just folding here so this is hip traction so another little technique I'm taking my thumb into my hip crease I'm getting myself an adjustment pressing my hip back as I fold deeper all these little things one of the things I say about flexibility is I'm trying a lot of different techniques they're all useful nothing's better they're all approaching flexibility in a different way so why not learn them all and kind of take what works for you pet alright so we'll come on to her seat now I'm going to take a wide leg forward fold so getting into the glutes here and hamstrings and even the inner thighs even though the legs are are straight so I'm going to flex here for a moment and I'm going to go ahead and point so pointing and flexing is really a style over substance of course if you flex the feet you're stretching the undersides of the legs a little bit more so it's not a bad idea to flex the feet but we also have that pointed option looks really nice and stretches the tops of the legs so both useful I'm going to go ahead and make my way all the way down so again we're calm here so it's not that I'm not feeling anything I'm feeling a lot right now a lot of sensation your thighs and even I guess my quads but I'm remaining calm I think sometimes where the tendency to think discomfort is pain and then it's not let's go ahead and make our way up okay so next we're gonna attack the hip flexors a little bit so the hip flexors will help you with your back leg so I'll have you come on to your belly so you'll be prone and come into Sphinx pose here so you're on your forearms so you'll take your left forearm and move it diagonally bend your back leg and I'm pointing the foot using some active flexibility here I'll reach around grab the top of the foot and then see if you can transition your fingertips to point down so this is half frog p