# Splits, gracilis adductor muscle



## dan.jaret (Jan 14, 2017)

So bragging about my splits here and I also hope this helps  
This is an exercise to stretch that long adductor muscle, which if not stretched properly will get injured and you'll feel it in the inner side of your knee.


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## Gerry Seymour (Jan 14, 2017)

dan.jaret said:


> So bragging about my splits here and I also hope this helps
> This is an exercise to stretch that long adductor muscle, which if not stretched properly will get injured and you'll feel it in the inner side of your knee.


Dan, if I could do those splits, I'd have a video of them, too. Thanks for the stretching example - maybe this will help the less flexible among us.


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## dan.jaret (Jan 14, 2017)

gpseymour said:


> Dan, if I could do those splits, I'd have a video of them, too. Thanks for the stretching example - maybe this will help the less flexible among us.


You are welcome.
So basically you rotate your pelvis, bring your rear hip forward for a second, as you let it back to the starting position you will feel that you can increase the abduction, this is, you'll be able to go a little deeper. And keep going until you feel uncomfortable, the idea is not to get to the point of feeling uncomfortable, that backfires and tenses you up further (this is the stretch reflex).
Lifting the leg for a couple of seconds on most people it will help to go even deeper (reciprocal inhibition) and even if it doesn't, you should still practice a few reps because it gives you good functional strength and flexibility for kicks (active flexibility). 
And I'll stop there.


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## JP3 (Jan 14, 2017)

Bravo, Dan! I chased that grail of the full middle split for... 15 years? Then I realized that I wasn' going to go to the Olympics for TKD (or anything else) and that my Thai leg kicks were way more effective at destroying the will to fight of an opponent (for me) than any snappy round kick to the bad guy's head, so I decided to not only give up the chase, but to no longer even try for it, instead learning to drive my leg all the way through my opponent's front leg and cut the back one. Nifty. Worked for me until I ended up slidding into judo-aikido.

Not much call for splits in aikido. Judo... maybe. Uchimata for a guy who can do the splits... Woooiee!


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## dan.jaret (Jan 15, 2017)

JP3 said:


> Bravo, Dan! I chased that grail of the full middle split for... 15 years? Then I realized that I wasn' going to go to the Olympics for TKD (or anything else) and that my Thai leg kicks were way more effective at destroying the will to fight of an opponent (for me) than any snappy round kick to the bad guy's head, so I decided to not only give up the chase, but to no longer even try for it, instead learning to drive my leg all the way through my opponent's front leg and cut the back one. Nifty. Worked for me until I ended up slidding into judo-aikido.
> 
> Not much call for splits in aikido. Judo... maybe. Uchimata for a guy who can do the splits... Woooiee!



Interesting. I chased that too for at least 15 years as well, till I found something that worked, and I keep getting stuck and learning new stuff to overcome it, from myself and people I train. Some people can do splits after a few quick stretches   I personally had to read and try everything for so many years. I don't envy those flexible by birth guys because I learned so much on the way, and I wouldn't have made a living of it.

Uchimata from a split?  why not. Van Damme does a punch from a split so... we can create a full splits fight style, we got two techniques now


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## Transk53 (Jan 15, 2017)

dan.jaret said:


> Interesting. I chased that too for at least 15 years as well, till I found something that worked, and I keep getting stuck and learning new stuff to overcome it, from myself and people I train. Some people can do splits after a few quick stretches   I personally had to read and try everything for so many years. I don't envy those flexible by birth guys because I learned so much on the way, and I wouldn't have made a living of it.
> 
> Uchimata from a split?  why not. Van Damme does a punch from a split so... we can create a full splits fight style, we got two techniques now



Yeah, but with JCVD, ballet training probably helped tremendously no?


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## dan.jaret (Jan 15, 2017)

Transk53 said:


> Yeah, but with JCVD, ballet training probably helped tremendously no?


It definitely did. Ballet dancers have the toughest method, I guess he was able to tolerate that and he combined it properly with his karate training.


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## JP3 (Jan 21, 2017)

Cool! I like that...


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## KangTsai (Jan 23, 2017)

I'm about 20 degrees off of my full splits. More than enough to kick someone's head off of their shoulders, but not quite enough to impress anybody. I've only been trying for the static full split ignorantly for a few months now. Hope I achieve it before age 15.


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## JP3 (Jan 25, 2017)

dan.jaret said:


> Interesting. I chased that too for at least 15 years as well, till I found something that worked, and I keep getting stuck and learning new stuff to overcome it, from myself and people I train. Some people can do splits after a few quick stretches   I personally had to read and try everything for so many years. I don't envy those flexible by birth guys because I learned so much on the way, and I wouldn't have made a living of it.
> 
> Uchimata from a split?  why not. Van Damme does a punch from a split so... we can create a full splits fight style, we got two techniques now



I'm having a conceptual imagination brain cramp trying to figure out how that'd work.... what I was referring to is a prototypical uchimata, where ThrowER grabs ThrowEE does the nifty footwork to gain the entry and then Wham-O! One foot goes skyward, between the ThrowEE's legs. Perhaps this results in Ouchimata instead, but hey... get out of the way, I say...


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