The seated wide-legged ahead fold — generally known as the pancake stretch — is a foundational pose that, when totally expressed, demonstrates severe flexibility. Additionally identified by its Sanskrit title upavishta konasana, this posture supplies a deep stretch in your hips, groin, hamstrings, and decrease again.
Right here’s the best way to carry out it with correct kind, in addition to tips about the best way to make it simpler or tougher.
Seated Extensive-Legged Ahead Fold (Pancake Stretch): Step-by-Step Directions
- Sit on the ground along with your legs prolonged, and open them so far as you may with out straining. Your knees and toes ought to level instantly towards the ceiling, and your ft ought to be flexed.
- Convey your consciousness to your pelvis and spot any tendency for it to tilt backward. If that’s the case for you, attempt to shift your weight ahead towards your pubic bone.
- With out permitting your backbone to spherical, begin to stroll your palms ahead alongside the ground between your legs, hinging at your hip joints somewhat than your waist.
- Stroll your palms ahead so far as you may, and maintain for five to 10 lengthy and clean cycles of breath, preserving your quad muscle groups engaged.
- Slowly return to an upright place, utilizing your palms beneath the backs of your knees to deliver your legs collectively.
Tips on how to Make the Pancake Stretch Simpler
Sitting on the ground with straight legs could be very tough for many individuals. That is primarily attributable to tightness within the hamstrings and decrease again. Thankfully, there are modifications and variations to the pancake stretch that make it accessible to novices with restricted flexibility.
- Sit on a yoga block or folded blanket. This may assist tilt the pelvis ahead.
- Sit along with your legs farther aside. This modification usually creates extra freedom to stretch ahead.
- Loop a belt round every foot to provide your self one thing to carry onto. Now, concentrate on leaning ahead and lifting your chest towards the ceiling.
Tips on how to Make the Pancake Stretch More durable
If this pose is “too straightforward,” it’s probably that you’ve got a rare quantity of mobility or are tremendous flexible. Be sure you’re sitting instantly on prime of your sit bones, preserving your pelvis in a impartial place somewhat than an anterior tilt. Flexible our bodies, as a normal rule, usually must work on stability, somewhat than mobility, on this seated ahead bend.
- Add a lateral stretch. With out shedding the rooting actions of 1 leg, fold over the opposite leg, and work on lifting your torso and lengthening over it. This provides a stretch to the opposite facet of the decrease again by introducing a twisting factor.
Advantages of the Pancake Stretch
- Stretches hamstrings, adductors, and decrease again.
- Prompts core musculature.
- Strengthens spinal erectors.