Martial Arts Stretches : Martial Arts Splits Stretches

Now we are going to get into a little bit more of a static stretch. You are still going to be activating your muscles but it is more of a static active stretch, but we are going to be sitting still now. Javari is going to demonstrate this. We are going to go in to our splits here. You are going to take a step forward. What he is going to do is he is going to start to work his feet wide and it is a good idea once you start going, go ahead and go a little bit more, and put your hands on the floor. He is nowhere near as wide as he can go but from right here I actually want Javari to try and squeeze his feet together. Now some people have to bend their knees a little bit to keep the pressure off out of the knees, that is fine. He is only going to squeeze for about ten seconds, and once the count of ten seconds is done, he puts his feet wider. Alright, go ahead. And he is going to squeeze for ten seconds again. We are going to be abbreviate this a little bit. And go ahead and slide your feet a little bit wider. We are going to get a little bit more in to where you are going to start feeling tight and he is going to squeeze again for ten seconds. Now what is happening here is you have a muscular reflex that determines how long your muscles are going to stretch for. And what you do is when you are tensing those muscles like what you are going to be doing when you squeeze your feet together here, you are temporarily defeating that reflex so that when you are done squeezing for about one and a half seconds afterwards you actually defeat that and you can get a little bit wider. So squeeze for a few seconds, and then when you are ready, try and get another inch out of each foot. Now Javari is sitting here in this stretch for quite a while, he has been stretching for a number of years. My suggestion is you have to take this one really easy because these muscle groups are vulnerable to pulling and straining. Try one more squeeze. And relax, try and get an inch more out of it. And if not, that is fine, sometimes you cannot. Again, the most important thing is you cannot push it. Now he is going to bring his feet together just a little bit, he is going to walk his hands forward carefully until his knees touch the floor. Good. Now that his knees are on the floor, he is going to push his body up and back, he is going to try and find a comfortable way to sit in this position. If this hurts your knees then you would bend your knees inward a little bit more. But if it does not, keeping your feet out actually gives you a pretty significant stretch. Now if you can find ways to sit in this position for a little while, this is a great way to loosen up the groin muscles and the inner hip. You are going to work your way forward again, sometimes this is how you can keep from getting too much intensity in that hip. Go ahead and push up and back. And come on up.