Some people stretch for years without being able to do the splits; others do it easily after a short while. Are there people for whom it is impossible, and is there a way to know in advance whether our efforts will be fruitful? Liv (of “LivInLeggings” fame) has the answer:

One side of the story

There are several factors that affect whether we can do the splits, including:

• arrangement of the joint itself
• length of tendons and muscles
• “stretchiness” of tendons and muscles

The latter two things, we can readily train to improve. Yes, even the basic length can be changed over time, because the body adapts.

The former thing, however (arrangement of the joint itself) is near-impossible, because skeletal changes happen more slowly than any other changes in the body. In a battle of muscle vs bone, muscle will always win eventually, and even the bone itself can be rebuilt (as the body fixes itself, or in the case of some diseases, messes itself up). However, changing the arrangement of your joint itself is far beyond the auspices of “do some stretches each day”. So, for practical purposes, without making it the single most important thing in your life, it’s impossible.

How do we know if the arrangement of our hip joint will accommodate the splits? We can test it, one side at a time. Liv uses the middle splits, also called the side splits or box splits, as an example, but the same science and the same method goes for the front splits.

Stand next to a stable elevated-to-hip-height surface. You want to be able to raise your near-side leg laterally, and rest it on the surface, such that your raised leg is now perfectly perpendicular to your body.

There’s a catch: not only do you need to still be stood straight while your leg is elevated 90° to the side, but also, your hips still need to remain parallel to the floor—not tilted up to one side.

If you can do this (on both sides, even if not both simultaneously right now), then your hip joint itself definitely has the range of motion to allow you to do the side splits; you just need to work up to it. Technically, you could do it right now: if you can do this on both sides, then since there’s no tendon or similar running between your two legs to make it impossible to do both at once, you could do that. But, without training, your nerves will stop you; it’s an in-built self-defense mechanism that’s just firing unnecessarily in this case, and needs training to get past.

If you can’t do this, then there are two main possibilities:

• Your joint is not arranged in a way that facilitates this range of motion, and you will not achieve this without devoting your life to it and still taking a very long time.
• Your tendons and muscles are simply too tight at the moment to allow you even the half-split, so you are getting a false negative.

This means that, despite the slightly clickbaity title on YouTube, this test cannot actually confirm that you can never do the middle splits; it can only confirm that you can. In other words, this test gives two possible results:

• “Yes, you can do it!”
• “We don’t know whether you can do it”

For more on the anatomy of this plus a visual demonstration of the test, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Stretching Scientifically – by Thomas Kurz ← this is our review of the book she’s working from in this video; this book has this test!

Take care!