Parents Best way to stretch for full splits

[InMyGymMomEra]

My 6yo daughter's coach wants her to stretch her splits at home. She's nearly there, but doesn't always get all the way down. Also, sometimes her hips aren't all the way square or her back leg is bent, which lets her get down but only by cheating! Her "pancake" stretch is 180 degrees and flat, so it's the splits with the right let or left leg in front that she's after.

What is the best way for her to stretch her splits at home? (Growing up I did ballet and our coaches just had us hold stretches for veeerrrry long periods of time, do over-splits, etc. It was effective but pretty draconian, so I'm assuming [hoping?!] there is more science now about how to stretch safely.)

Thanks for any tips I can share with her!!

 

[Coach Kate]

Does she ever do quad splits against the wall? We did a whole sequence first with front leg bent 90 degrees, back shin to the wall, arms up over head. Then straighten front leg and immediately bend it into a deep lunge. Ideally arms stay up, but it can be challenging, and many won't have the shoulder flexibility to keep arms on the wall. Then re straighten front leg and reach towards/past front foot. Usually 30-45 seconds on each of these parts and then the last step is slide to split with back shin still on the wall. She may need blocks to support her hands to keep her back leg vertical, especially if she struggles with keeping square. I would aim for a minute here. I did do this with oversplits personally but only because I have about a two foot oversplit. when I'm actually training.

The other thing that can help is training active flexibility - like warming up with kicks either on her back or standing, then doing a hold with her hand holding her foot and then letting go and trying to maintain as much height as possible. This made such a huge impact for me when I was training contortion (we were also full adults and used weights, which I wouldn't recommend for young athletes who don't already have a full split) .

For reference, this was my "bad" leg when I was close to my peak.

I'm having a hard time finding a normal picture of quad splits but just ignore the block lol