Horizontal Splits

Temple Blog about horizontal splits

Horizontal Splits

Bend both knees to squat, holding on to the ground with both hands in front of the body. Slowly split both legs leftward and rightward and gradually stretch the legs to touch the ground with the backsides of legs, tips of toes pointing up. Hold on for a moment, then bend both knees. Draw the knees back to the squatting posture, and repeat. The horizontal splits aim to highly enhance the suppleness of the ligaments and fascia of hip joints and extend the hip joints’ outward expandability.

Muscle groups

The muscles involved in the side splits are:

four adductors (brevis, longus, magnus)
pectineus
gracilis
medial hamstrings

Bending splits

Another type of horizontal split is bending splits, where the practitioner holds the lower legs with both hands and bends the upper body to touch the ground with the chest and the inner sides of the legs on the floor. When beginning to practice horizontal splits, the practitioner can set a low stool in front of the body, prop the upper body up onto the chair, split both legs apart leftward and rightward, and adjust the height between legs and the ground according to physical fitness. Both legs should be stretched straight in a horizontal line during horizontal splits.

Crouching Splits

Crouching splits are a type of exercise like leftward/rightward crouching on boots performed based on horizontal splits. In this way, muscle groups on both sides of the upper body are indirectly exercised.

Types of exercises that help with horizontal splits

horizontal splits front and back stretching

Previous image

Next image