My Favorite Warm Up for Splits!
I don’t know about you, but I need A LOT of warm up before doing splits these days! If I know that we are going to train splits in my Sunday contortion class, I spend about 30 minutes before class preparing my hip flexors and hammies for the assault to come. Gone are the days that I could slide into a split at the beginning of a stretch session.
So, I’d like to share my split specific warm up with you. Now remember, this is what works for MY body. It may be too much or too little for you, and you’ll have to figure that out on your own or with a flexibility coach.
As I’ve said in previous posts here, most flexibility coaches do not warm up their classes enough for my liking. Here is what I like to do (in order):
Foam Rolling- I hit my hamstrings, calf muscles, and hip flexors on the roller for about 3-5 minutes. I pay particular attention to my crankier areas, which changes almost daily.
Nerve Glides- My sciatic and femoral nerves get really annoyed with me, probably because I train quite a bit. Lifting weights, contortion and pole work takes it’s toll on my old body for sure! I usually do one set of 10-15 reps of a sciatic nerve glide, and one set of 10-15 reps of a femoral nerve glide on each side. These can be found easily on YouTube.
Active Flexibility Drills- I like to use min-bands and large resistance bands to work both hip extension and flexion. I’ll do banded lunges, hip lifts & bridges, and forward folds using bands.
Light Static Stretching- Finally, I finish with some light, static (or passive) stretching. I don’t move into full splits until mu body feels open. I may start by using a block under my front thigh before going all the way in.
This is what I do before I train contortion, where we usually start in a “contortion split” (an almost full split with the front knee slightly bent and square hips). Last week I actually cut my warm up short, and had to leave class early because I pulled a hip flexor. Not fun.
I have also found that training splits once a week is not enough to make any real progress. Sind these are not a major priority of mine, I only train them 2x per week (there just isn’t enough time for all of the things!). If you really want to improve your spilts, either on the ground or in the air, you’ll need to make training them a priority. Try 3x per week to start, and add more if you can.
Be sure to let those muscles rest in between intense flexibility sessions. No gains can be made if you do not allow your muscles to rest and recover!