Over the past couple months I've been trying to increase my flexibility so I can do a side split or chinese split. A few reasons for this are 1. A side split not only requires a lot of flexibility but a lot of strength. 2. A side split takes a lot of commitment to acomplish 3. It's just something that I've always wanted to be able to do.
My intention is to be able to do a suspended side split on chairs or bricks or whatever by the end of January 2005.
I plan to use Thomas Kurz's method of stretching outlined in his book "Stretching Scientifically". You can find some articles on his technique here: http://www.stadion.com/column.html
The basic technique is this.
1. Do some dynamic stretching everyday to loosen up a bit.
2. Sit in a horse stance while flexing your inner thigh like your gripping the floor with your legs.
3. Relax from the horse stance, widen your feet and drop down into a horse stance again.
4. Slowly but surely increase the distance between your legs while in a horse stance. Eventually you'll make it to the full side split and have enough strength to slide your feet together in order to get out of it.
5. I also have one of those leg splitters. not the machine kind that you sit in. I have the one that has three arms. You pull the center arm to spread your legs apart.
I plan on doing the dynamic stretching in the morning with the horse stance training and then the static leg spreader at night while watching tv or something.
I'll post pictures of my progress in this thread. Anyone want to join in on the fun?