So you’re setting up for your forearm stand: you’ve got your elbows shoulder width apart, forearms firmly pressing into the ground, shoulder shrug muscles engaged! Then you kick your feet up, and oh no - your elbows are slooowly starting to slide out to the sides, no matter how much you squeeze them in! What’s going on?

The “elbow splay” is a challenge many students face, even folks with relatively flexible shoulders. The two biggest reasons this happens are…

A common challenge students run into when wanting to start working on more advanced contortion backbends like chin and chest stands is a lack of neck flexibility and strength. These poses in particular are incredibly demanding on our neck, requiring not only a large amount of cervical extension (aka “arching/backbending through the neck”) to begin with, but also an incredible amount of strength in these muscles to keep the neck safe in these poses when you have a large portion of your bodyweight potentially smooshing down into your neck in a precariously arched position.

Do you feel like it’s impossible to sit up straight when sitting on the floor? This is a super common challenge folks with tight hips. But what if I told you the solution isn’t just stretching your hips more? Whether we’re talking about sitting in a “pike” position (butt on the floor, legs together straight in front of you), or sitting in a “straddle” (butt on the floor, legs spread out wide), the two major things this requires are…

Being able to hold a bridge is a challenging, but rewarding, flexibility goal because it requires flexibility and strength through the entire backbending chain, from our hips, to our back, to our shoulders and arms (and even hands!). But specifically because it is requires coordination, strength, and flexibility through the full body, it can be easy to push too hard in one area, or forget to engage another, or simply not have the prerequisite range of motion to comfortably support the pose. At best that might mean your bridge is a less effective stretch than it could be, or at worse it could hurt and lead to potential injury.

So in today’s post we’re going to look at the 8 most common mistakes I see students make in bridges, and how to address them. And these aren’t just “beginner” mistakes, I have worked with contortion-level bendy students in private lessons who make some of these!

This is a topic I wish I had learned about WAY earlier in my flexibility training journey, because it made such a huge difference in my leg flexibility (and I see the same thing happen with many students that I work with).

For the longest time, I just thought I had tight calves when it came to forward folds . . .