Sidesplit help

[anteriorankle]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone could provide some suggestions regarding an issue with my SS. I don't think I've witnessed a person with a worse SS than mine (less than 90 degrees). When standing in the position (or sitting with legs spread) I get an intense pain on the inside of my knees, which may be gracillis but I am not confident. My butterfly isn't fantastic but I'm continuing to work on it and it produces a 'normal' stretching sensation with no pain. I did try some horse stance work in the past but I'm not sure if that assisted (perhaps I'll have to start doing it frequently to see if it helps). I've also had people massage my gracillis/inner hamstring as Kit has shown in some of his videos but that did not reduce the severity of the pain. Other things I have been trying are standing with legs apart but in a ROM just before pain would present itself and alternating between externally/internally rotating each leg as well as trying to alternate tail tuck/APT. This does feel quite nice in my hips but does not feel like it's helping the issue. I would love some advice here as the pain will not disappear without actively working on it, but I am a bit lost on what I can try.

[Nathan]

Hey!

The first thing I would try is support your knees! This will be a bit more difficult with your SS so high, but find something that you can place under the legs that will contact them just above the knees on the inside. Chairs, perhaps. This may be easier to set up sitting in a straddle on the floor with something between your legs (rather than feet against a wall). Keep your legs straight as usual, but do the stretch with the support above the knees. If you don't have the pain, then you probably need to work on strengthening the knees (and quads), or just learning to contract the quads properly to stabilize them. If you still feel the pain, then it might very well be gracilis and you're just not used to the intensity you're experiencing, so you're interpreting it as pain. Try rolling the whole inner thigh out with a ball to loosen things up a bit first and see if that changes the sensation.

Perhaps someone will have better advice, but those are a couple of ideas to try in the meantime!

[MarkusO]

How is your strength in that position? I would try to break it down into partial poses first for stretching and to strengthen the range with cossack squat variations and squats with a wider stance. I am assuming here that your pain is just  a strength deficit and no other problem. If it is a sharp pain I would probably try to get that checked out by a professional first.

[anteriorankle]

On 8/22/2018 at 12:24 AM, Nathan said:

Hey!

The first thing I would try is support your knees! This will be a bit more difficult with your SS so high, but find something that you can place under the legs that will contact them just above the knees on the inside. Chairs, perhaps. This may be easier to set up sitting in a straddle on the floor with something between your legs (rather than feet against a wall). Keep your legs straight as usual, but do the stretch with the support above the knees. If you don't have the pain, then you probably need to work on strengthening the knees (and quads), or just learning to contract the quads properly to stabilize them. If you still feel the pain, then it might very well be gracilis and you're just not used to the intensity you're experiencing, so you're interpreting it as pain. Try rolling the whole inner thigh out with a ball to loosen things up a bit first and see if that changes the sensation.

Perhaps someone will have better advice, but those are a couple of ideas to try in the meantime!

Thanks Nathan, I will give this a go. Just to clarify, I'll sit in a pancake and wedge something between my legs (maybe a foam roller lengthways?) above my knees? Am I actively trying to pull my legs together into the object?

18 hours ago, MarkusO said:

How is your strength in that position? I would try to break it down into partial poses first for stretching and to strengthen the range with cossack squat variations and squats with a wider stance. I am assuming here that your pain is just  a strength deficit and no other problem. If it is a sharp pain I would probably try to get that checked out by a professional first.

I am actually not too sure about my strength in that position - I'd assume I'm very weak. I am able to do some Horse Stance work but Cossack Squats will be tough as I have limited ROM in both knees (I had a Meniscus repair on my left side and at its best can get my glute to about 10 cm from my heel, and my right side I can go all the way but I suspect I also have a torn Meniscus there as I sometimes get clicking and pain so I try to avoid using the entire ROM which seems to be necessary for Cossack Squats). 

[Nathan]

1 hour ago, anteriorankle said:

Just to clarify, I'll sit in a pancake and wedge something between my legs (maybe a foam roller lengthways?) above my knees? Am I actively trying to pull my legs together into the object?

No, I meant like this:

But instead of putting your feet on the wall and leveraging off of your whole extended leg, set it up so that the object you will push against contacts your inside legs just higher than the knees. Basically, you're still going to be prying your straight legs open, but the opposing force will be contacting above the knees instead of at the feet. In other words, you could modify any normal SS position. For example: 

This would be fine too. And you could weight it by placing something just higher than the knees.

This would also be fine with the blocks or some other objects placed above the knees.

The point is to create the stretch - with straight legs - while keeping excessive force off of the knees. Markus is right that it is probably a strength issue and you need to slowly build that up, but I believe this will help you verify that it is not just an issue with your interpretation of the sensation.