subject: Muscle Stretching Exercises - Careful With The Splits [print this page] Muscle Stretching Exercises - Careful With The Splits
Every dance student, cheer leader and other dancers would like to do the splits. Those split grands jetes and side split cheer leader leaps are stunning. Men in ballet also, if they were not born to do it, aspire to become more flexible and do split leaps. There is more to it than stretching muscles, struggling to do more and stand the pain. If you know how to effect myofascial release, and perform resistance stretching from the top of the body down ward, you will be able to get a lot more from your muscle stretching exercises.
Men are usually stronger than women, with shorter ligaments, meant to support force on the joints, and shorter but more powerful muscles, meant to do demanding work. So this article may help some men in ballet, especially.
For both men and women, whether you are young or older, maybe a beginner in adult ballet classes, having high leg extensions and maybe being able to someday do the splits, is a dream of yours.
If you were born hyper-mobile, with long ligaments allowing your joints to move more than most people's, then you can sit in the splits with no pain. Your pelvis will move to a front-to-back position, your front leg will be straight, and your back leg will be straight. And you will have a special challenge, no matter what kind of dance you study, to control all your movements.
Other people will have shorter ligaments. yet can achieve ballet positions by stretching their hamstrings (or back of thigh muscles), adductor (inside thigh) muscles, and postural muscles in the front spine area, allowing their leg to lift high to the back.
Learning how to release ALL the tension in your whole body muscles, helps you stretch and lengthen the muscles you need for doing the splits, or getting closer to a splits position.
