the pancake is one of the best stretches to get really flexible unfortunately if you can't do it it's just your genetics we're just kidding guys that's a joke we both started super super stiff in the pancake nowhere near this and today we're going to show you how you can turn a stiff inflexible pancake into a nice deep one we really like the pancake as a mobility goal because it forces you to work on not one but three different components of hip mobility you have to be able to straddle or open your hips you have to
be able to forward fold and have flexible hamstrings and finally we have to combine those two to get into the full pancake so if you have a hard time sitting on the ground with your legs out in front of you or sitting at a butterfly or sitting cross-legged then you should probably get on working on those but that doesn't mean that you can't start your pancake journey right now and that's what this video is all about so we're going to show you how to work on your pancake from absolutely zero stiff to advanced pancake chest
on the ground so we've broken this down into four basic stretches that you can use to prepare you to get deeper into your pancake stretching so first we'll go over this forward fold hamstring flexibility range so i'm talking to you you guys that have those stiff hamstrings number one is the standing good morning so this is one of our favorite exercises especially for beginners to just start opening up those hamstrings main cues here are that you want to keep that knee all the way straight that's going to have the best carryover to your pancake and
you want to keep that spine and then extended to neutral position as you hinge down so you want to start off with doing this with two legs but as you get better and more flexible you can transition into one leg after you spend some time there then we really like to transition people into the jefferson curl so the jefferson curl is essentially a forward fold where you're gonna elevate your feet and you can use some weight to pull you into a deeper position we have a great jefferson curl tutorial and we'll link it in the
description but the main points are that you want to really articulate the spine starting with tucking the chin in this top of the spine and then slowly folding all of those components until you're getting yourself as compressed as possible pushing that belly towards your thighs now be careful with this one you don't want to use a lot of weight starting out use something really really light and then you can gradually progress so next we have the straddle position this ability to open your legs and kind of stretch those adductor muscles our favorite to start this
is the butterfly against the wall also known as the tailor pose you want to keep your full back and your hips against the wall and now we essentially just want to open the knees down towards the ground now my favorite way to do this is dynamically pushing the knees down you can use some external weight from some dumbbells or something like that or you can just press your hands down into your knees hold for a second or two release and repeat and lastly is the cossack squat or the side squat optimally to really stretch your
straddle position you want to keep your toe actually facing forward for your cossack you squat down to one leg and the straight leg has to lengthen and open to the side this does wonders for your straddle position so you have to determine what you need more of for your pancake some people have great hamstring flexibility but just can't open their legs to the side if you're that type of person you should work more on your straddle and vice versa so now that we got these prep stretches out of the way let's get to the specific
pancake work the first progression in the pancake series is the standing straddle good morning now this is a perfect exercise for you if you sit on the ground and try to do a pancake and you really just can't go forward at all yeah i'm talking to you young joshua edward okay so you'll start out in a standing straddle position now you don't need to put your feet as wide as possible but you should be close to that point from here the exercise is pretty simple you're gonna hip hinge meaning bend at the hips now the
important things to remember here is you want your hips to travel backwards and your head to travel as far forward as possible keeping your spine really long we prefer to do this for reps and each rep you want to try and go a little bit deeper than your last so that by your last rep you're far deeper than that first one and keep that back nice and straight no roundies in this one so once you're able to do the standing straddle good morning getting your torso parallel to the ground you're ready to move on to
the seated pancake but we're not gonna start seated on the ground most people rush to this step too soon we like to have people start by sitting on something that's about a foot tall then over time we can work on lessening that height until we get to the ground you know that you're ready to lower the elevation when you can get your torso past 45 degree angle now when we're starting to work on this full pancake especially in this step where we're at here chances are that it's going to be hard for you to pull
your torso down now something that comes in really handy is using the assistance of weight so there's different variations that you can use here but one of our favorites is just to grab a dumbbell or a weight plate and to stick that on your back now as you hinge the torso forward this weight helps to push you or pull you into a deeper pancake position so the more weight that you use potentially the more it will push you into a deeper position but you need to be careful here if you use too much weight too
fast you could potentially be putting yourself at risk for injury just enough to push you deeper but not excessively too much now just like the sandy good morning our favorite way to work this is with reps going down to as deep as you can get and then coming back up and out of it and each rep seeking a bit deeper position go ahead and hold on your last rep for about 10 to 20 seconds so next is to move into the full pancake on the ground yes we got there now we're going to talk about
all the stuff that you should be focusing on the cues you're going to give yourself for each of the progressions we already talked about including the one we're doing right now so first one a lot of people are gonna tell you to arch your back and extend your spine when you're working on the pancake and we actually find that the best way to work on this is instead just thinking about making your spine long think about reaching the top of your head or your forehead as far forward as possible towards the wall in front of
you so instead of arching like this just getting nice and long reaching the head forward [Applause] compressing the ribs if you can will oftentimes help you get even deeper now if you're doing each of these stretches correctly you should be feeling a stretch somewhere in this general area either the adductors maybe the hamstrings sometimes you can't even really tell but if you're feeling it anywhere else then you might need to go back a progression now one really important cue to always give yourself is to externally rotate your hips meaning you want to turn your kneecap
up or even potentially facing back towards the wall behind you now as you go into your pancake they might tend to roll inwards like this it's okay as long as you're focusing on squeezing hard into that position that will give you everything you need now once you make it to the floor you can continue using weight on the back to continue to push the depth of your pancake but one variation we really like that actually requires no equipment is just reaching your arms as far forward as possible or even potentially holding something pretty light in
your hands out on the end so think about reaching your hands and head towards the wall in front of you as far as you can and that should pull you deeper into your pancake really really reach do this for reps and at the end of each rep in your deepest position you want to hold and see if you can just go a little bit deeper we really like this reaching variation because it also teaches the skill component of the pancake which is this compression force of pulling with the muscles on the front side of the
body to get you deeper into your pancake if you feel like you always need the weight to push you into your pancake but you can't pull yourself into it then you may need some of that extra compression strength an exercise you can do every time you work on your pancake are these straddle lift-offs where you're gonna sit in your pancake go into it but don't go as deep as possible place your hands on the floor and we're going to lift the feet as high as you can while extending the arms and you can hold or
do these for reps you should feel a ton of tension on the front of the hip and a ton of tension in the core one mistake josh and i both made on our pancake journey is trying to go too quick so make sure you take your time focus on the cues and make sure you're ready to move on to that next progression before you do it so guys we referenced some other videos those can all be found down in the description let us know where you're at with your pancake journey and leave a comment below
with the next stretch you'd like to see us break down step by step if you found this video helpful at all really appreciate a thumbs up a comment all that stuff helps strengthside keep growing we're on our way to 1 million subscribers and if you want to be one of those we drop videos every single friday let's go have some pancakes ciao
