Straight Leg Twists -- Can't put both hands on the ground#1243

While in the straight leg twist position, I am able to place my elbow on the outside of my bent knee, but I cannot put my hand on the ground as Hampton does in the instructions. I can touch with my fingers at best.

Is this something I should/can work toward in my form?

Good evening. Ok so 3 things. First, work on improving your overall flexibility, particularly in your hips, hamstrings, and lower back. Gentle stretches like seated forward bends, hip openers, and hamstring stretches will help increase your rom. Next, practice the twist position regularly, but don’t force it. Gradually deepen the stretch as your body allows. If you nees to, use props like yoga blocks or folded towels under your hand to provide support as you work towards touching the ground. Lastly, throw in some dynamic stretches and mobility exercises into your routine. So these would be like spinal twists, cat-cow stretches, and thoracic spine rotations

Thanks! This answered my question, and gave me some things to work on.

I’m in a similar position, but only on one side. As in, I can place both hands on the floor twisting to the left, but my to the right. Should I work on holding the stretch longer as I work on stretching further, or should I focus on perfecting the form before lengthening the time of the stretch?

a stretching time of around 60 seconds should always suffice! It’s mostly a matter of just actively trying to improve the form / range of motion that you use :)

Lars, thank you. I’m on level 1, so I’m only holding for 15 to 30 seconds at a time. Should I stick with that length of hold until I’m able to get both hands flat on the floor?

Yes, when youre able to hold that time consistantly, then it will be time to progress to lvl2

Hm while I see that the routine definitely recommends that, I can’t say I fully support it

What really changes by holding the stretch for longer is that we increase our volume for that exercise (since the sets stay the same on all levels), and if you don’t find yourself getting overly sore from it or anything (which I’d be surprised by), I’d definitely just recommend holding each set for 60 seconds <- if anything you should be able to reach further over those 60 seconds rather than you getting exhausted and not being able to reach as far, as you’d expect from more strength focused exercises

And with that presumably deeper stretch and increased volume that you can (I assume) easily recover from, you should only really see better/faster results - aka get to the proper form faster too! :)