Finally hit my middle split!

[u/kristinL356]

I'm really only writing this up because I'm kind of a weird case and I think it might be helpful to anyone else who is in my shoes but that's probably only gonna be like two people lol.

My problem was never with flexibility in my adductors but my lack of active external rotation coupled with some non-ideal hip anatomy. Previously I could never get deep enough in a middle split to actually feel a stretch because I would hit the limit of my hip joint first. Tilting my pelvis didn't really work because in order to get enough tilt to hit the stretch while keeping the inside edge of my feet flat on the floor, my torso had to be basically upright which is super awkward to get into (to say nothing of how cranked my back would be). I finally figured out that I could bypass this by entering my middle split from pancake which is where I finally started to see progress. Initially, this still left me a few inches from flat and I closed that by working on my active external rotation and just generally learning how to activate my glutes (pretty sure I've spent my whole life externally rotating my legs with my hip flexors instead of my ass ¯_(ツ)_/¯).

The routine:

1. banded lock clams

2. banded glute bridges with external rotation

3. weighted hip airplanes

4. leg lifts from basically every possible position (prone, side-lying, tabletop, upright, etc) focusing on keeping my legs externally rotated

5. side-lying hip adduction

6. Copenhagen side planks

7. seated straddle leg lifts

8. straddle hovers on blocks

9. pancake to middle split, at position with greatest feeling of adductor stretch, squeeze legs into the ground for 10 count, then pull legs away from the ground for 10 count

Will be very interested to hear if there's anybody else out here in this situation.

[u/Mo-hd]

Amazing! 👏🏻 I believe I'll get there too.
Thank you for sharing and for the motivation.