Question re Isometric Side Split

[Tris]

Hi all,

 

I'm doing Van Zandt's isometric split progressions and really enjoying it. Well, more enjoying the 23 hours 45 minutes of the day around doing it.

 

Have a couple of questions:

1. Feet position. At the moment I'm keeping my toes forward and ankles eversed so I'm standing on the inside bridge of the foot. In other words, the ankle stays in a totally straight line to the lower leg. Is this safe for the joints as I get lower?
2. Does supporting your bodyweight become mechanically more difficult as you get lower? Or, is the progressive difficulty because, as you get lower, you are contracting adductors/gracilis further into a range they are not used to? I ask because I'm wondering what to expect as my range increases.

Thanks!

[Jim Pickles]

Interesting routine - which goes against everything I do... but I think I ought to give this approach a go. I do lots of warm up and passive stretching as preparation, and then can relax into my straddle just about, as long as I let my legs go about 2" out of a straight line - I have been at this stage for years. I attempt to never contract my muscles to hold my own weight when doing this (opposite of what van Zandt says) because if I do I tend to tweak a once-damaged area on my inner thigh. Maybe I need to strengthen the inner thighs more, so the damaged (and hence probably shorter) area does not tend to take so much of the force.

 

Has anyone on this board actually achieved a full straight-line straddle split with this method (that they could not do already)? I'd be interested to hear.

 

Sorry I cant answer Tris's questions.

 

Thanks, Jim.

[Emmet Louis]

 

 

Has anyone on this board actually achieved a full straight-line straddle split with this method (that they could not do already)? I'd be interested to hear.

 

 

I use similiar techniques with all my students and have put a lot of people into the side split using such methods.

[Geotrismegistos]

Im no expert but here are my two cents:

-I have followed/worked on this exact progression for a few cycles. What im doing the rest of the time is very similar to that but without the exact details (time,weight etc)

-I have stressed my joints a lot and i have not been injured so its alright but use common sense of course

-My current view on how to approach it is this

* Dont wear socks and dont work on a slippery surface. You dont need the extra extreme challenge

* Open ur legs as far as you can go without warmup and work on that range only. Dont try hard to open ur legs more and go to your limits (the place where you clench your teeth to stay up for a couple of seconds more). This will give you no joint pain, and no super soreness feeling in ur legs like cement the next day, with less flexibility than before you did your workout. You will only have a pleasant soreness and some great fatigue in all the right muscles. Thats what im doing now and i wish i did it sooner.

No need to add that you should have the right pelvic tilt etc

Good luck

[Kit_L]

Emmet, I have seen Jim's SS many times; beautiful. He got his by relaxation; I have never been able to do this – mine, when I had them for the first editions of S&F, took massive force.

 

How are yours going? I'd be interested in hearing how this method has worked for you personally (I was looking at images from Piacenza only this week, while we were searching for images for our new site); IIRC our flexibility in this ROM is similar.

 

I do not use the Van Zandt method personally (but it looks excellent); but the one I use is comparable and I imagine many of us seeking the Holy Grail have converged on techniques. I am down on an Aerobic step plus one support at present; I will append a pic. This was taken last week.

 

To get down to where I am took maximum contractions, but held for shorter periods than the Van Zandt protocol. I will try his today and report back. For me, flat parallel feet (so Chinese middle splits, à la Mary Lou Retton) is the goal, so the Van Zandt protocol seems perfect for that.

 

@ Tris: personally, I would not worry about ankle position; I'd be protecting the inside of the knees as priority #1 (I do this by contracting quadriceps and feeling what's happening in the knees).

 

Side Splits: a worthy goal.

 

 

Notice my legs are turned out, too; much easier on the knees. I do both ways though; in this pic I am completely relaxed, so turnout was needed for that, for me.

[Kit_L]

Just did 5 x 30". following the Van Zandt protocol; feels good now. Let's see what tomorrow brings. I was able to tuck my tail, so not at maximum width yet (following my own advice!). 

 

@Tris, q. 2: There are many adductors, and all have a different leverage efficiency, which changes as the femur–hip socket angle changes. My sense is that whatever needs to get stronger in whatever proportion is necessary will happen, all by itself. From a leverage perspective, the closer the legs are to 180°, the more the longer adductors need to work (analogy is relationship between brachialis, brachioradialis, and biceps; at 180°, biceps has no leverage; brachialis does all the work).

 

Actually, thinking on this, the analogy is back to front: when the legs are widest, the longest muscles are doing the most work (this is what it feels like in my body anyway) whereas then the arm is perfectly straight, only brachialis has leverage to bend the elbow (biceps crosses both the elbow and shoulder joints). 

[Ciaran]

@Tris

1]. The integrity of your knee will depend on your strength of any muscle crossing the inside of the knee as you increase your range. Personally feet inverted (soles of feet on the ground) feels safer to me as its a more stable position because of the increase base of support and your not fatiguing the ankle inverters as you would in the position you described. In theory less valgus force through the knee, I think!

2]. I feel that it gets mechanically harder as the lever arm is lengthening relative to the axis. Additionally, the strength/length relationship of muscles needs to ne considered, which is similar to a bell curves distribution. So at end (lengthend) range you will be much weaker than mid range.

So pretty much both of what you said is correct. You would expect, I feel, similar results as strength work, inc strength, endurance etc.

[Jim Pickles]

The van Zandt method is rather similar to a method Pavel Tsatsouline posted many years ago - using maximum muscle strength to hold yourself up in your final position. One advantage is that the high level of tension in the leg muscles will brace the knee joint, lessening the danger of the joint being forced sideways.

 

While the explanation given in the van Zandt posting is that the strength allows you to reach your maximum, I wonder if something else is going on (as well; or maybe instead).

 

We know that eccentric contractions are the most powerful way of remodelling muscle. Basic research shows that contractions at full extension are most effective at producing new sarcomeres in the muscle, and that active contraction with stretch stimulates a lot of biochemical signalling pathways in muscles, more than just stretch alone (while we dont know what these signalling pathways do, they are clearly part of the response to stretch, so may be involved in legthening). The ST approach uses muscle contractions at the extreme end of the stretch, and this may be doing something similar.

 

So I wonder if its the contraction while stretched that is stimulating the muscle to grow longer, rather than just the stretch itself.

 

I'd like to try this myself, but as I said if I contract my muscles while near the end of my range in straddle, I tweak a previously-damaged area. However I am building up by trying contractions when I am in positions that are well within my range.

[AndeL]

Thanks for bringing this method up Tris, I am curious about it & will mix it in with pulsing. George's points re regulation of intensity strike a chord... I have always gone too far in I think ie getting to genuine end range and doing holds there. 3 min holds kind of cures this and I imagine really sends a strong dose. Isometrics can become a bit wishy washy for me, hence I have gone shorter and harder. However, 3 minutes makes some sense to me. Starting with Kit at 5x30 as below this is too easy I reckon. Exciting!

[Emmet Louis]

@ Kit,

I'm pretty much flat at this stage, its at a level of varying day to day some days balls to the floor others calves etc.  The interesting thing is I can't relax into this position I have to keep some level of tension. 

The other interesting thing, between the isometrics and the pulsing the scar tissue in my adductors has pretty much vanished.

What I find with my students is that there's a lag between gaining some isometric strength then it translating to the side split. Like they'll hold at 160 degrees for maybe 5 x 90s with some added weight and not progress for 5-6 weeks in rom then one day they'll just go in to training and bam! completely flat. The interesting thing is a lot of them describe the same thing mentally that they go in and just know that they can now do it . 

Here's one example

[Tris]

Wow - thanks everyone for your posts. It's great to read more about how this works.

 

I hope this will do for my SS what H2T has done for my forward bend/FS. Jim's SS is excellent, but the idea of getting there relaxed is a very foreign concept to my body. I logged daily time on a geared stretching machine for six months and seemed to hit a plateau around 135-140˚ that I really had to strain to get past. The strain would progressively tighten me from one day to the next, counter-productive and didn't feel great at all. Plus, I always feared how weak the legs would be in that position, considering how much GST and sport I do. Perhaps it's time to sell the split stretcher.

 

Jim & Ciaran: Thanks for the physiology explanations. I always love hearing the specific adaptations made from training.

 

Kit: Thank you. It's very interesting how many different muscles come into play here. The biceps brachialis comparison makes a lot of sense. It sounds like the 'journey' may be quite similar to H2T: work with, and progress through, specific lines and areas of tightness as they come up.

 

Agree with George and Ande about lower intensity. Personally, I find the idea of deliberately creating a slippery surface, and multiple PNFs as preparation prior to contract, really excessive. I would reserve these things for a plateau (maybe similar to the strength-flexibility delay Emmet talks about). I have taken on the same approach with Emmet's H2T, after the bouncing strained the hamstrings and I didn't respond to ballistic work for 2-3 months. Now, I am back but doing something much closer to pulsing than I did bouncing. I am still catching up to where I was, but I am making excellent progress and think I can pulse my way to where I want to be. The improvement in quality of life without the insane tightness/DOMS is also a huge benefit. I think in general it's been an attitude change from how intensely can I work on this? to how gently can I work on this, and still have success?

[Kit_L]

Emmet, I am so pleased to hear that; can you ask one of your students to shoot a quick video on a good day? The more people here who can do this wonderful thing the  better!

 

Re. your students' comments; may I reframe it (and I think the reframing is more accurate): It is not that they think they can do it, it's that they feel that they can, in the moment of trying. I think this distinction is important—the mind's idea of the capacity of the whole system is created exactly by proprioceptive feedback, not the other way about. If the mind could actually direct what the body can do, we all would have been perfectly flexible a long time ago.

 

Very interesting about the "nothing seems to happen for 5–6 weeks, then bam!" thing, too. I tell students often that there is change happening all the time but we cannot see its cumulative effects, and we often ca't feel it, either, so we think that nothing is happening. Many give up in that period.

[Ciaran]

@jim - not to go off on too much of a tangent but it is my understanding that a muscle only increases in physical length (i.e. addition of sarcomeres) through prolonged periods of stretch (days to weeks). Examples of this would be splinting or casts. Have you read differently? I'll have to double check where I read my version!

[Jim Pickles]

@cairan - the scientific demonstrations of changed sarcomeres (whether addition/loss etc) is as you say only known from experimental animals with long periods of immobilisations (e.g. 10 days and over; e.g. Williams and Goldspink 1978). Unfortunately measurements on stretching in human beings do not usually go on long enough to demonstrate major changes in the mechanical properties of the muscles. Studies seem determined by the length of a university semester, whereas to make major changes in muscle properties through stretching in adults can take years. In all this, changes in connective tissue (e.g. fascia) and in sensations from the stretched muscle have to be considered too, as they play a major part in the early response to stretch. However, the mechanical properties of "loose" (i.e. flexible) and tight individuals shows that their muscles have very different length-force curves (i.e. a between-person comparison; Magnusson). Therefore if you can turn a tight person into a loose one (which takes years) there is a considerable chance that you will have similarly changed the muscle properties (which would need a within-person comparison; not done so far). It is most likely that this happens by sarcomere addition. It could happen by sarcomere lengthening, but that in the context of other results seems a less likely hypothesis. So while there is no direct evidence, it is likely that a stretching program that goes on for years increases the number of sarcomeres.

[Ciaran]

@jim - Thank you for that. You basically gave me a wonderfully concise answer that I would have struggled to get otherwise! I'll have to agree with your hypothesis. Can I please get more details on the Magnusson reference?

[Emmet Louis]

@ Kit the guy in the video I linked is one of my students. His experience was we progressed quite high in the isometric style splits with some added weight. For reference he's very strong in the legs 160kg squat for 3 at that time. Then no progress for maybe 2 months. Then on the day he took the video he tried the side split test with one leg on a chair. Knew he could do it then went over and did it.

While I agree with the reframe I do think there's another element at play as a fair number have basically woken up in the morning knowing that today is the day I do side splits and then proceed to prove them selves right. I'm willing to say that maybe they're only reporting the days they have success on and there's been other days where they said the same and nothing happened it still has been reporting enough that I think its worth considering.

Here's one of my students, Emily, doing the exercises in her program for side split,

https://www.instagram.com/p/-lubG9OdP8/

Current Level, at the plateau 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAw7NWXTWkV

Here's Elise who you've met demoing the really wide squat approach

https://www.instagram.com/p/0X7o93udH2

https://www.instagram.com/p/-QLbUgwT00


Sev's first side split, the face says it all,

https://www.instagram.com/p/5IlKBxC3q_

Putting it to use

https://www.instagram.com/p/BA5HM_-i3rs

David's progress using the wide good morning approach,

Start:

https://www.instagram.com/p/9-MTUrPX3y

Current level

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAHWecdPXxC

Clare's first as well

https://www.instagram.com/p/4uKJM6TJ_J

There's some more people on instagram on my hashtag #emmetlouis or on my fb page.

The thing about all those above is while the principles we used were the same in all cases, progressively gaining strength in the adductors the exercise selection and order was fairly different for each person.





 

[Nathan]

I think he was asking for a video of your side splits, Emmet Lots of good inspiration right there, though!

[Emmet Louis]

Oops misread it. I'm waiting til I have Van Damme/ Thomas Kurz mode. I find myself in the unfortunate position that if I post myself doing anything it has to be impeccable as other wise I get loads of detractors trying to find and then post any flaw, real or imagined they can.  

[Jim Pickles]

@cairan - you can look up Magnusson SP on Pubmed. This work was in the late 1990s and there are several papers. Cheers, Jim.

[Kit_L]

Emmet, it's only love around here brother. And I am completely happy to say publicly that I can't do SS presently (but, and it's a big but, I am working on it).

 

A very wise teacher once said to me that what someone else thinks about you is absolutely no business of yours. I have lived by this prescription ever since; it was totally liberating for me. Personally I would love to see your side splits and as soon as I get close I'll be posting more videos myself. Perfection is a concept, and can be a toxic one, in my experience.

 

Thank for all the other links to students' performances, too; watching now.

 

A living testimonial to your methods Emmet. Excellent.

[Tris]

Exactly. It's a shame that all your students' progress doesn't speak enough for itself, and people need to see some 'messiah' who has perfected the moves but who knows if they can actually teach/coach anything.

 

Ahh YouTube culture.

[Jim Pickles]

@Tris - I would say that if you were logging up daily sessions on your splits machine and were getting tighter over the days, you were overdoing it. As you know, Kit in Stretching and Flexibility says that he found that stretching about 2x/week was about optimal. My view is that after a hard stretch session the muscles are irritated, and need time to recover before the next session. I have found that stretching in this period is counterproductive. I also think that it is quite possible that the increase in muscle length - i.e. the actual growth in length of the muscle - happens in the periods while the muscle is recovering after the strong stretch. Therefore, time has to be left for this to happen.

 

I myself do a hard straddle once/week. That includes going to my max on the straddle machine, a pancake, and side splits a few times from standing. I can do pancakes after a small warmup many more times/week if I want, but dont attempt the straddles.

 

I tell my students - hard stretches 1-2x/week. If you can do hard stretches more often, you are probably not going at it hard enough. If you have to wait more than a week to recover, you are probably overdoing it, and wont get enough stretching in to make much progress.

 

The disadvantage of what I do, is that there is no strengthening involved - I am probably therefore quite weak. In fact, I am not interested in being particularly strong - I want the flexibility, both for itself and for performance. Nevertheless, the lack of strength is a disadvantage. Another disadvantage is because there is no hard bracing of the leg muscles if I am not careful the SS can put a small sideways bend at the knee. This happens when I am sitting in a SS (as I said earlier, about 2" away from a perfect straight line) and while it does not seem to have any negative effects (at the moment) this is one reason why I only do it once/week. Another issue is that I do seem to be at a plateau at this stage, but have no particular strategy for getting over it - I will just continue what I am doing and hope. Another issue may be my age (nearly 70 - cant believe it...) and as we all know the malleability of the body falls with age.

 

So I am very interested in the approaches described in this thread, because they are so different from what I do, and they seem to work - though at this stage I dont know if what I do is worse or better. I have certainly improved a lot using the relaxation method during my 60s. Some of my older students have improved their leg flex during their 70s, but they may have a natural ability at it (based on physique).

 

@Emmet Louis and Kit - in relation to the sudden breakthrough and thinking "today I can do it". One thing that I have noticed, is if I am preparing to do a sequence of actions (particularly if they are ballistic and I have to carry myself through the whole sequence; e.g tumbling) is that if I have hurt myself at some stage in the sequence, it is remarkably difficult to force myself to even start it. Something seems to be blocking me. I guess the brain is switching off the ability to do it because its internal program has "pain" tagged somewhere along the way. I wonder if what you say, comes from some inhibition because of the subconscious memory of mild pain from previous sessions, or the knowledge from previous sessions that what the student is trying to do is impossible. But after further practice of the elements, the feeling fades, and at that point the brakes to doing the moves are taken off, the feeling "today is the day" comes on, and it is accomplished.

 

Jim.

[Emmet Louis]

Youtube culture is annoying alright but in some ways its a reaction to all the charlatans out there. I can link you to so many coaches who don't do what they claim to coach. 

@kit I sent you some pics via fb

[leroy]

I use similiar techniques with all my students and have put a lot of people into the side split using such methods.

But do you use such long times, like 3´sets?

In one routine you posted in facebook you spoke about much shorter times, didn´t you?

[Emmet Louis]

@ leeroy for the average person I use 90s isometrics max and then once achieved I'll add weight and decrease the hold times and build back up. We'll also cycle exercises, volume, freqeuncy and intensity to match the training phase.

I think one of the biggest things is selecting the right exercise for the person. This is the biggest concept I've taken from stretch therapy.That people need different exercises along their journey and selecting them correctly will be make or break for their progress. I'm only at the stage of shifting out of heuristics on this and getting into concrete examples.