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Butterfly leg stretching on floor, why can’t my knees be on the floor?
Sorry to ask again. I can’t find the post using the search button. I remember it was said before that for those who can do a traddle (middle split), they may not be able to do a good butterfly on the floor. When I sit with my 2 feet facing each other on the floor, my knees are not near the floor. The further I put my feet off my body, the higher the knees go. What are the musscles which do this stretching?
This video at 4:20 demonstrates the pose I’m talking about:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5NgRcaKdrAU
Thanks for all your helps.
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5 Replies
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I’m kind of confused why someone who can do a middle split would not be able to do a butterfly on the floor? I dont think I understand that…I think most peoples’ knees do not touch the ground when they sit in this position. you would have to be extremely flexible and have open hips to sit in this position and have your knees touch the ground. so I wouldnt worry that your knees dont touch the ground. the goal is to engage the muscles that would move your knees to the ground if they could move to the ground. butterfly stretches the muscles of the inner thighs. you must engage the muscles of the external hip rotators to open the hips so that you can go deeper in this stretch. I’m not very good at explaining how to engage external hip rotators but those are the muscles along the outside of the hip that cause the hip to rotate outwards from the hip socket. strenghtening those muscles opens the hips and stretchs the inner thighs.
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Thanks for your reply. The post I read in this forum said we need 2 different groups of muscles to do the middle splits and to do the butterfly pose on the floor, and most people are not flexible at both.
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thats interesting. well, I definitely dont know enough to say whether that is right or wrong. I think I just dont understand it. I have middle splits and can do butterfly well, thats probably why it seems strange to me. I definitely squeeze my external hip rotators to open up for both stretches. it seems to help me get both of them flatter. and I use my hands to press down on my butterfly too,while I’m contracting those muscles. maybe someone will have some good tips to make butterfly easier for you. I also like to do pigeon pose to help open my hips.
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The two groups of muscles that need to lengthen to do middle splits are the hamstrings (back of leg, particularly the 2 medial hamstrings) and the adductors (5 muscles along the inner thigh). The adductors and medial hamstrings also internally rotate the femur in the hip joint, so externally rotating those muscles as in the butterfly stretch will help lengthen those muscles and will thus assist somewhat in increasing the middle splits mobility.
If you have your middle splits but the butterfly is difficult, your external rotators of the hip (glut max, deep six external rotators, lateral hamstring, etc) may be weak relative to their antagonist muscles (the 2 major muscle groups mentioned above). For dancers, external rotation of the hip (“turnout”) is emphasized heavily, and you can find lots of ballet workout videos online to help with this. Search keywords “turnout” and “ballet”. Cleo the Hurricane also has an extension and turnout video (which I have yet to try).
I have this exact same problem – my external rotation is extremely limited but I have my middles…on a good day 🙂
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Thank you for your replies.
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