Kurmasana is also called the Tortoise Pose or the Pancake Stretch.

This pose is also a gate way to more advanced yoga poses and hand balances. 

Watch The Kurmasana Muscle Animation

Outside of yoga being able to stretch forward with legs abducted or straddled transfers over to various sports and activities:

• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners benefit from this pose, when looking for various chokes and submissions from the bottom guard or looking to move the limbs around their opponents limbs.
• Break dancers, gymnasts, kicking martial arts stylists and pole dancers can improve their skills as well, if Kurmasana is well developed.

Why is Zaichik Stretching Effective?

A traditional yoga method of obtaining this pose can take many years. The reason for this is because yoga poses usually focus on many muscle groups at the same time. Our program is very different:

• The pose is quickly broken up into its components.
• Each is targeted quickly with Zaichik Stretching techniques.
• Principles of creating space in the same muscles through multiple actions is used.
• This allows for quick flexibility development, while avoiding the stretch reflex. The progress comes much faster, than with standard yoga techniques.

A Sample Exercise

Now try this other exercise and feel how it works! This is an exercise targeting the Adductor Magnus muscle, one of the muscles you need to work on to improve your pancake, splits, ekapadasirsasana, among others.

1- Get into position as closely as the picture as you can.

The focus will be on the front leg and chest to the floor, so keep this in mind. Once you find your position and how deep you can go, don’t push or relax there, go to step 2.

2- Lift your heel for a second.

This is the move that will create space for your target to go deeper. Once you lifted your heel don’t stay here either, the move should be one quick second, then go right away to step 3. 

3- Heel down and drop your chest.

It is important that as your heel is going down so is your chest. This way you have tricked your body and got deeper into the stretch.

Then step 3 becomes your new starting position! Keep repeating the sequence and get deeper and deeper without pain. You do the “leverage” then as the leverage returns the target goes deeper. Leverage again, as you retrieve the leverage your target goes deeper, and keep moving. Heel up, heel and chest down – heel up, heel and chest down, and so on.

Take a quick look at the program contents

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