Front Splits

Let's take a look at the front splits, a beautiful exercise involving a sweet combination of balance, strength, and flexibility. Please make sure you take care when trying this exercise. One spring is generally a good choice. I would say once again because there's a control component here having a heavy one spring is useful. So perhaps a green spring for many of us, a red spring would be okay as well, and should you need a red with a yellow or something along those lines, that's perfectly fine.

I would be cautious trying anything under a red spring with this exercise and make sure that you're paying attention to how you feel in your body as you piece it together. So it requires, first of all, for you to be able to stand comfortably on the reformer with one foot on the foot bar. Let's look at that first. Taking care with your hands on the footbar, stepping on with your feet, move back to heels lifted position as if you were going to do an up stretch here. And then Sometimes people do this exercise by lifting the leg and swinging it forward onto the foot bar. If that's something that you can do, that is one way to get into this exercise.

Another way to get into this exercise would be with the foot set in this position to kneel down to your knee, and then place your foot kindly up on the foot bar, use your strong arms and legs and stand into that lunge position. Do take care and make sure that you've got your heel wedged up against the shoulder rest as you need that support for this shape. So this is the framework for the beginning of the exercise. The foot is in a solid position where I have access to my foot, and I'll stay here with my legs. As I find balance with my upper body, the goal here being that you're straight up and down with your body, arms can be out to the side or wherever they need to be. First, we balance here. Second, keeping the body where it is in space, we press the leg to straight. And we come in.

So once you're comfortably able to achieve this first movement in this same range, the same we're not going up and down yet, then we would keep the front leg straight. And we might go as low as you possibly can into a split. And then you'd see if you can come all the way up to the stopper. And then go as low as you possibly can into a split. Slightly, slightly soft front knee to make sure it's not in hyper extension.

To come out of it, you wanna be at that same range you started, then bend the knee, come in put your hands on the foot bar. Carefully, you can step out of it by taking your front foot down, or if it's comfortable for you, you could put the knee down and change sides. I'll do just another one on the other side. I'm pretty confident my foot's in the right position. So I'll just take my left foot up into position. Stand up. Make sure the heel is wedged up against the shoulder rest.

Find your balance. Take care. Try to square the pelvis. Always one side a little harder. This is my harder side. Two straight arms if you can out to the side.

So here, pressing the front leg to straight. There's an incredible amount of hamstring and glute energy here to straighten the leg. Good. Once you're comfortable with that, we've got two straight legs, and we decide to see how low we can go into the front split, keeping the body stable, and then lifting up. If you can, all the way to the stopper, Generally, I would do about three here before coming in for the sake of time and you're viewing. We're just gonna do one full.

And then coming out of it, come halfway up, bend the front knee here. That should be a safe place to come in. And then you can put your hands back down to the footbar, carefully bring the carriage in and maybe dismount the same way you got in. And that was the front split. Thank you.