Why You Can't Sit Cross Legged (And How to Fix It)

if you can't sit cross-legged in crisscross applesauce positioned with your legs then how are you living your life how are you getting down on the floor to play with your dump trucks or your hybrid dump truck bulldozer thingy how are you getting on the floor to play with your nephews your nieces your kids your grandkids you're not so you're missing out on key components of a healthy happy life if you sit down on the floor cross-legged and you look like this or you just fall over backwards then you have a lot of work to do and if you're wondering whether you can actually fix your hips so that you can sit crisscross applesauce then the answer is Bonnie can you help me out here Boney hey yo that guy's so addicted to his phone he doesn't even eat the answer is yes you can improve your hip mobility so that you can sit crisscross applesauce it's just going to take some work so if you're ready let's get ready to think right move right and feel right so first things first we need to understand the relevant anatomy and how your body actually moves the bones to achieve certain positions many people will believe things that doctors have told them which is basically that their bones are shaped wrong or that their bones are too stiff the reality is your bones don't move themselves Boney can you help me out here bony dude bony can't actually move because bony has no muscles and he also has no brain hey man I heard that it's the truth you don't have muscles and you don't have a brain as a result boney's bones are just stuck in whatever position they happen to be in until an external Force acts on them in your body and in my body the muscles are what control bone position so if I didn't have muscles and they all weren't working I would be flat on the floor unable to do anything when you're trying to achieve something like sitting on the floor with your knees out to the side in crisscross applesauce the muscles need to allow for it and need to be able to stabilize you comfortably in that position if muscles of your inner thigh and deep around the actual hip joint are too stiff or too weak or too strong in some way they will block your ability to achieve certain positions and angles and so you understand the anatomy here the ball of your femur meets with the socket of the pelvis and that's where you get What's called the hip joint that's the meeting of these two bones put me down man I still remember that brain comment around these two bones are a bunch of muscles that attach to various places on the femur and can even go down to the top of your calf they attach all over the pelvis in all kinds of funny directions and angles dude put me down all right all right all right so to train your body to be able to go out into this position you have to train all the muscles around the hip joint to be able to handle these new angles now you might be wondering why your muscles in particular seem so bad at getting into this position and why it's been that way for so much of your life think about this from the age of about five or six years old you go into school and you're stuck in a seated position like this and as you get older and get into Middle School you're still stuck in this same position not ever working your hip muscles and when you get to high school you're still stuck in that same seated position and if you went to college or to post-grad or you just got yourself a normal desk job you end up sitting in this position all day long unless you live in a country or culture where it's totally normal to just be sitting on the floor with your legs and crisscross applesauce you have no practice being here and with your muscles you either use them or you lose them or maybe more applicable to this situation is the same practice makes permanent or close to permanent because it's not actually permanent it just feels permanent because whatever your muscles get used to is what they'll just do and anytime you try to change the normal operating parameters they're going to complain so now let's talk about some strategies to help you with your muscles we're going to use repeated position practice we're going to use strength at every length to help you open up your hips so you can use the muscles in the right way to get your knees down and your feet under them and into a comfortable crisscross applesauce Bonnie and I both want to say a big thank you to Ashley for the 50 super thanks and really awesome supportive comment that she left on my video about hip pain when you're sleeping on your side thank you so much for that donation Ashley if you want to support this channel too you can use the patreon or PayPal links in the description box or use the join and things buttons you'll find on YouTube now let's get back to sitting crisscross applesauce so to do this you're just going to need some cushions or some yoga blocks and you're going to put them near the wall you're going to sit on them so your butt is up against the wall and you can keep your back comfortably on there and you feel stable what I don't want you to do is be so far jammed in there that you feel like you're tipping off of the wall so just find that comfortable level use whatever cushions you've got to make this doable then you're going to walk your feet back towards each other put them together and let the knees go out only as far as they can go without you feeling like you're getting pinching jamming or tearing in your groin because pinching jamming and tearing in your groin is just not fun also we don't want any pinching or jamming happening on the outer hips we want to just go to where you can get where it feels like hmm I'm a little bit stiff and stuck if when you do this you feel like you're really really stuck then get more cushioning so that you're up higher so that you get a little bit more opening so you can at least get your arms in there to do the next portion of this exercise so let's say you're just starting here and you feel really stiff you're going to take your arms put them right between your knees you're going to contract your inner thigh muscles to pull in towards your arms while your arms resist and push out so you're Contracting feeling your inner thigh muscles work hold it for three to five and then you're gonna relax and then the arms are going to be pushing out still so the inner thigh muscles relax the arms are still pushing out you're just trying to stretch a little bit more then you're going to contract those inner thigh muscles fire fire fire fire and then you relax the arms keep pressing out and you're gradually prying your knees further and further apart again you don't want to feel any ripping or tearing Sensations you want to feel the muscles working work work work work work work and then when they relax you keep pushing out within a doable safe range of motion make sure you're doing this slowly because slow is safe and fast is foolish let's do this one more time we're gonna contract contract contract and then relax and push out and then you hold this last position for 15 to 30 seconds just breathing getting to wherever you can go seeing if you can stretch it out without feeling like you're ripping something out of your nether regions [Music] to a wider angle you'll be able to switch to using your palms on your knees and then you can get some real serious leverage to start pushing down towards the floor again staying safe staying within limits that feel challenging and not damaging so let's talk about why we're doing this the muscles of the inner thighs are what often will restrict our ability to get our knees out those inner thigh muscles are used to being really short and by firing them stretching them firing and stretching we are teaching them to have strength at a more lengthened position our goal when we train our bodies is to have strength at every length since we tend to spend so much time in this position in our daily lives those inner thigh muscles are usually not very strong as we get out into more abducted positions so we need to make sure our brains inner muscles understand that we can actually control these more open positions and still feel safe in those positions but there are also muscles on the outer hips that we need to address as well so now we're going to work on the outer hips so you're going to get into that same starting position I'm going to assume you're really really stiff and tight so you're just like this you're going to take your arms put them on the outsides of your knees now here's what's going to be different we're going to be contracting the butt muscles so you're going to feel these booty muscles firing to pull your knees apart and your arms are going to resist but when we do the relaxed portion it's your arms that are going to relax and you're going to let the booty muscles work to continue to pull the knees apart okay so it's going to look like this we're here arms are on the outside we're going to contract contract contract contract oh yeah enjoy enjoy enjoy then you relax the arms keep squeezing the glutes and then you notice how I'm trying to pull out further using those booty muscles that's what we're looking for then we create that resistance track contract contract contract contract and then relax trying to pull them out even more and then do it again track contract contract contract contract and then relax and keep pulling so you keep doing that keep doing that keep doing that then if you want a little added fun you can use your hands to assist those Contracting booty muscles to pull down just a little bit further and then we hold that last position keep those butt muscles firing keep teaching them to stabilize your hips in a more open position and oh baby ooh baby baby oh baby baby baby baby [Music] you should feel like you've gotten at least a few degrees of improvement you're not going to improve by 90 degrees in any one session in any one session aim for like one degree or five degrees of improvement don't aim to make 45 degrees of improvement because tomorrow you will probably be limping because your muscles were just not ready to make that big of a change as you achieve more and more openness with your knees you can start to lower the amount of cushioning that you're using the lower you go the more it's going to be like sitting on the floor and the more applicable it's going to be to sitting crisscross applesauce I would generally suggest pairing both the inner thigh and the outer hip firing together so you do one first then the other and then do two maybe three rounds of that and do that twice a week when you first start and maybe three times a week if you really want and if you feel like you can tolerate it on a daily basis but at a reduced intensity just as practice then feel free to do so just remember not to yourself with soreness and once you get the hang of things you can also use dumbbells to help you create that downward Force so if you are trying to train those inner thigh muscles holding weights on there while you do the contractions and then the relaxation Cycles is going to be pretty helpful because it means you won't actually have to use your arm muscles and you can just let the weight of these freaking dumbbells drag your knees to the floor and when you're doing the outer hip activations once you get to that bottom position and your firing firing firing and you want to try to push down a little bit more you can also use those dumbbells to create that downward push squeeze those glutes to go down further and let the weight help you get down and just keep that glute contraction oh yeah oh baby baby baby baby and then one day you'll find that you can get that last cushion out of there and you can sit down on the floor with your knees apart and you're gonna feel like wow what am I some kind of circus freak now the truly astute viewer will have noticed that I was teaching you how to do the butterfly stretch and that's not really exactly the same as sitting crisscross applesauce I applaud you for noticing that the truth is doing the butterfly stretch will not be exactly the same as sitting crisscross applesauce but it's gonna be helpful still because you're going to be training the same muscles that restrict the motion but we can alter the way we do that exercise and do things throughout the day to help make sure we get more carryover for sitting crisscross applesauce for example we can alter our foot position and knee position to make it much more like crisscross applesauce this means we're going to be a little asymmetrical because we're going to put one foot in front of the other whichever one you want to be more comfortable with is fine and then you can work on doing the same things that we did with the full butterfly stretch we can go and press and use the inner thigh muscles we can go from under and outside and use the butt muscles do all those same things but in that crisscross applesauce position astute viewers will note that this is very asymmetrical and so it's important to make sure that you alternate which leg is in front and train that mobility in those different configurations so that things stay more symmetrical over time so a really great way to work in the actual crisscross applesauce to your stretching routine is to do the butterfly stretches that I showed you earlier and then after you've done two rounds of both inner and outer thighs then do another round where you're working on actually being in the crisscross applesauce position and see what happens when you do those same contractions so your stretch session might look like this you go into the butterfly stretch position you're going to use your inner thigh muscles to five reps of this so you're doing the contraction and relax contract relax five times then switch to the outer then you're Contracting those butt muscles Contracting track contract relax contract contract relax five times then do that final push down oh yeah get down there squeeze hold that position then you can do another round of both of those if you can tolerate it then you go into same exercises but go into crisscross applesauce position okay maybe this time if you feel like you don't want to do the full thing maybe just do three repetitions of okay inner thighs inner thighs inner thighs three and then outer push them down and then switch that position so that you're getting it symmetrically or maybe the next day you switch and do the other leg in front the key here is to gradually acclimate two going to crisscross applesauce you want to train your hip muscles to be able to handle that opening and that may take you a long time if you're a 45 year old man who's been locked in a chair for his entire life it may take you some time to open up and that's okay it doesn't mean that your current limitations are permanent if you're a 55 or 65 year old man or a woman who's really stiff know that change is possible it may not always be comfortable but if you are patient if you adjust the intensity of what you're doing and if you don't freak out when things get a little uncomfortable and sore you will be okay but if you try to do everything super intensely every single day and you ignore warning signals from your body and you keep pushing through things that are popping and cracking and you ignore the pinching and the tearing Sensations you're gonna be really really really unhappy and you won't make any progress because your body will be in a constant state of pan and you won't be able to make any difference to being able to sit cross-legged because you're going to be constantly hurt and in pain and your body's going to be in panic because you keep treating it like garbage so remember that slow is safe and fast is foolish and you will eventually find that you are able to sit cross-legged comfortably I almost forgot to cover one thing you can do throughout the day to help improve your ability to open up your hips while you're sitting at your desk or sitting in your chair you can take one of your legs and get it up over the thigh I know some of you will struggle with this and that's okay one thing you can do is to lean back and just inch it up and then bend the knee and then work your way to a more upright position don't push through any pain especially in the knee just go to where you can comfortably get and then feel some challenge in the hip muscles you want to feel that challenge somewhere up around here not so much down here all right so then you're going to just maintain that position breathe one thing you can do in terms of contractions is to think about pushing the ankle and the shin bone down into the thigh that's going to contract those muscles up here and then you're just going to feel that contraction and then relax another thing you can do is to use some of those contractions we used earlier in the butterfly position you're going to be firing inner thigh muscles firing butt muscles the goal here isn't necessarily to go super hard especially when you're at work you're not going to be going you just want to feel like you can actually activate those muscles so your body starts to feel safer in this more open position do something like 30 or 40 percent of a maximum contraction so you don't need to be clenching everything you just want to feel those muscles Feathering themselves on and then turning off on and off if you're super stiff and you're way back here doing this that's totally fine too just work on the contractions you can work on try pushing the ankle and shin into that thigh try Contracting your butt muscle there even try lifting the knee up just so you can use some of those muscles all of that is A-Okay and it will help you sit down and crisscross applesauce cross-legged whenever you want in the future if you have a job that requires a lot of sitting doing this throughout the day is going to remind your body that hey we need to be able to do this because hey we want to be able to sit on the floor later this this is the beauty of repeated position practice your body's just going to get better at whatever you have it do a lot of as long as you don't do it too hard too fast because foolish just take your time enjoy those stretches enjoy those positions and enjoy your newfound ability to sit cross-legged if there are other positions you have trouble getting into I'd like to hear about it drop me a comment down below I've got more videos to help you do basic human things here like share and subscribe and as always I hope you remember that pain sucks life shouldn't and to quote from the great philosopher Bob the Builder can we build it yes we can Hallelujah [Music]

Channel: Upright Health

Views: 216,010

Keywords: criss cross applesauce, how to sit cross legged, how to sit cross legged comfortably, how to sit cross legged for beginners, how to sit cross legged properly, how to sit cross legged without back pain, how to sit cross legged without pain, how to sit indian style, sit cross legged, sit cross legged flexibility, sit cross legged hip pain, sit cross legged on floor, sitting cross legged, sitting cross legged without numbness, upright health

Id: kUtYRiOC3sE

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2023