The seated wide-legged ahead fold — generally known as the pancake stretch — is a foundational pose that, when absolutely expressed, demonstrates severe 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 you can carry out it with correct type, in addition to recommendations on how you can make it simpler or more durable.
Seated Broad-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 possibly can with out straining. Your knees and toes ought to level straight towards the ceiling, and your toes needs to be flexed.
- Carry 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 arms ahead alongside the ground between your legs, hinging at your hip joints reasonably than your waist.
- Stroll your arms ahead so far as you possibly can, and maintain for five to 10 lengthy and clean cycles of breath, preserving your quad muscle tissues engaged.
- Slowly return to an upright place, utilizing your arms beneath the backs of your knees to carry your legs collectively.
How one can Make the Pancake Stretch Simpler
Sitting on the ground with straight legs may be very troublesome for many individuals. That is primarily resulting from tightness within the hamstrings and decrease again. Happily, there are modifications and variations to the pancake stretch that make it accessible to freshmen 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, deal with leaning ahead and lifting your chest towards the ceiling.
How one can Make the Pancake Stretch Tougher
If this pose is “too straightforward,” it’s doubtless that you’ve got a unprecedented quantity of mobility or are tremendous flexible. Ensure you’re sitting straight on prime of your sit bones, preserving your pelvis in a impartial place reasonably than an anterior tilt. Flexible our bodies, as a basic rule, usually must work on stability, reasonably 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 aspect of the decrease again by introducing a twisting ingredient.
Advantages of the Pancake Stretch
- Stretches hamstrings, adductors, and decrease again.
- Prompts core musculature.
- Strengthens spinal erectors.
