The seated wide-legged ahead fold — generally known as the pancake stretch — is a foundational pose that, when totally expressed, demonstrates critical flexibility. Additionally identified by its Sanskrit identify upavishta konasana, this posture supplies a deep stretch in your hips, groin, hamstrings, and decrease again.
Right here’s how one can carry out it with correct kind, in addition to tips about how one can make it simpler or more durable.
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’ll be able to with out straining. Your knees and toes ought to level instantly towards the ceiling, and your toes needs to be flexed.
- Convey your consciousness to your pelvis and see 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 moderately than your waist.
- Stroll your palms ahead so far as you’ll be able to, and maintain for five to 10 lengthy and easy cycles of breath, protecting your quad muscle tissue engaged.
- Slowly return to an upright place, utilizing your palms beneath the backs of your knees to deliver your legs collectively.
Methods 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. Fortuitously, there are modifications and variations to the pancake stretch that make it accessible to newcomers with restricted flexibility.
- Sit on a yoga block or folded blanket. This can assist tilt the pelvis ahead.
- Sit along with your legs farther aside. This modification typically creates extra freedom to stretch ahead.
- Loop a belt round every foot to offer your self one thing to carry onto. Now, deal with leaning ahead and lifting your chest towards the ceiling.
Methods to Make the Pancake Stretch Tougher
If this pose is “too straightforward,” it’s seemingly that you’ve got a unprecedented quantity of mobility or are tremendous flexible. Ensure you’re sitting instantly on prime of your sit bones, protecting your pelvis in a impartial place moderately than an anterior tilt. Flexible our bodies, as a normal rule, typically have to work on stability, moderately than mobility, on this seated ahead bend.
- Add a lateral stretch. With out dropping 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 aspect.
Advantages of the Pancake Stretch
- Stretches hamstrings, adductors, and decrease again.
- Prompts core musculature.
- Strengthens spinal erectors.
