Leg Stretching Routine: Follow Along Shen Yun Principal Dancer's Secret Routine!

Welcome to this beginner follow-along stretching video featuring Lin Jie, a principal dancer from Shen Yun. In this video, you'll learn how to improve your flexibility using the same stretching techniques as a professional dancer. This routine is suitable for all levels and today's focus will be on stretching the lower body. Welcome back! Ready to stretch? We're gonna start off today with a really great stretch to loosen up the hips. I call this the butterfly stretch. So what we're gonna do here is just lightly tap your knees against the ground three times and then bend forwards as much as you can and hold that for about 10 seconds. Okay, 3, 2, 1, and now slowly get up. So we're gonna repeat this three times, and each time, take it as low as you can without tensing the muscles. Okay, get up. Then one last time, take a deep breath and on the exhale, try to bring your body as close as you can to the ground. If you need to, you can push your knees toward the floor to give yourself a deeper stretch. 3, 2, 1. Alright, great job guys! The next stretch we're going to do is called the single lotus. And this is another great stretch to loosen up the muscles in the hips. What we're going to do is take our right foot here and then place it over the left leg. So your right foot should be on top of your knee and your legs should be parallel to one another. And we're going to sit here for about 15 seconds and gently bounce the knee. So try to get that as close as you can to the floor. And if it's sticking up in the beginning, don't worry, give yourself time. Okay, after 15 seconds, we're going to slowly turn our body to the left. So that's warming up the back as well. If you need to, you can hold on to your knees to give yourself some extra support. Okay, now come back to normal. Good job. Okay, so next we have a stretch to reduce tension in our legs. It's super easy. Basically, we sit on the floor and extend our left leg out in front of us. And we're going to hold this stretch for 30 seconds. For a deeper stretch, feel free to flex your foot towards you. Just really focus on bringing your stomach to your leg. If you can't go down all the way at once, it's okay to arch your back. But eventually, you should try to get your stomach to touch your leg or as close as you can. Okay, so next we're gonna do the opposite side of our single lotus stretch So this time we're going to be taking our left leg and putting it on top of our right knee same as the other side We're just gonna give it a gentle bounce and hold it for 15 seconds. Three, two, one Okay So now we're gonna push our left knee away from our body and use this strength to gently twist to the right for another 15 seconds Two all right come back to center from the single loaded stretch. We're gonna go straight into our next stretch basically We're just gonna straighten the right leg here So it's in front of us keep our left knee on the ground and hold this for 30 seconds You should really feel a pulling sensation in the bottom of your leg Stretching all the way from your heel to your hips and come back to center. Next we have another stretch for both the back and The leg. It's almost the same as the front leg stretch But now we're gonna put our leg on the side. Try to keep both your hips seated firmly on the floor We're gonna reach out far and wide and go down to our leg We're gonna hold this for 30 seconds. When beginning this stretch for the first time You might not be able to touch your foot all at once, but it's okay Just listen to your body and focus on relaxing instead of forcing your body down towards your foot. Almost there Keep breathing. Now you should feel a deeper stretch in your side Now we're gonna do the opposite side, our left leg out. Reach out and over and try to touch your foot. And hold this for 30 seconds as well. Now, 30 seconds is a long time, so make sure you really remember to breathe. Never hold your breath. And if you feel any dizziness, stop immediately. Okay, almost there guys. Another few seconds. Three, two, one. Good job. Come on back up. Now we're gonna relax a bit by twisting both our legs to the left and right. This is to loosen up the tension in our hips and our legs as we just stretched it. Giving it motion from back to forth can help to further increase the stretch and also loosen up muscles that we might have tightened. In a way, it's like shaking it out and really giving your body a little break. Feel free to repeat as many times as you need. So next we're gonna do something slightly more advanced. It's called the side split. If you can't do a side split, it's okay. We can alter this stretch to fit whatever works for you. While staying seated on the floor, open your legs as far as you can. Make sure to keep your knees straight and working at a pace that's comfortable for you, try to bring your stomach as close as you can to the floor. Remember, if this is your first time, do not try to force your body all the way down. Rather, we're just going to go inch forward at a pace that's comfortable for you, and we're gonna hold it for 30 seconds. Now, remember to keep those knees as straight as you can and really relax and drop yourself forwards. Three, two, all right, slowly come back up. All right, so we're gonna take another little break here to loosen up the muscles we just stretched. We're gonna be lying on our backs and we're just gonna draw little circles with our knee, starting with one leg at a time. Make sure your other leg is firmly on the floor. feel like you're drawing a big circle with your knee to the floor and then towards your body. Feel free to repeat this as many times as you want, but make sure your back does not leave the floor, your body does not arch in any way. Try to really get all the areas that we just stretched. Our next stretch is going to target the hips, back leg, and hamstring. It's basically a one-legged forward lunge. So I'm starting here with my left leg, so we're gonna go into our forward lunge here, and then make sure we're really relaxing and easing our body into this position instead of forcing it down. Now, as long as you breathe, the weight of your body should bring you down at a comfortable pace. Okay, for 15 seconds, we're gonna do this two times. So each time, just try to bring your body a little closer. You can hold on to your knee for support, and for a deeper stretch, lean backwards. Now remember, as with all the previous stretches, we need to really focus on our breath and relaxing our muscles, because the more relaxed your muscles are, the easier it is to lengthen the muscle and reduce the tension. Okay, now we're going to do the exact same thing, but with our right leg in front. Hold this for 15 seconds. Alright, 3, 2, 1, come back up and one more time. Hold this for another 15 seconds. Here I'm holding onto my knee for support, but if you find it hard to balance, feel free to hold onto a table or a chair or anything around you. Good job. Now here from our low lunge, we're going to take it one step further by trying to bring our body close to the floor. So here I have my left leg in front of me, but it's actually beside my left shoulder. Okay, we're gonna hold this one for 15 seconds and repeat it twice. Same as the other side. So while doing this deep stretch, you might feel extra tension in your left hip, but make sure the more tension you feel in an area, the more you relax that area as that's probably where the muscles are most contracted and they need to be loosened up. So we're going to hold this deeper stretch for 15 seconds. And then when we're done, come back up. So now we're going to do the exact same thing on the other side. So bring your right leg in front of you. Relax and bring your body down to the ground. So we're going to hold this for 15 seconds as well. one up. And then one more time. Really breathe and let the oxygen flow. Okay, ready? 3, 2, 1, good job. Our next stretch is kind of similar to the previous ones that we did, but this time we're gonna sit on the floor with both legs out in front of us, and on a deep breath, we're gonna bring our body forward at the exhalation. Try to reach past your toes and really stretch out our legs. Make sure we're really stretching out the muscles in our legs and not tensing the muscles in our neck or our shoulders. Alright, 30 seconds. Give it a few final bounces. Alright, 3, 2, 1. Good job. Now, you're gonna come back up and directly relax the muscles in our legs. So, feel free to open your legs a bit and just sway them. Left to right, left to right, in and out, in and out. The last thing we dancers like to do after all our stretches is to really kick it out. This helps us to further reduce tension in the muscles we just stretched. And I would recommend holding on to something like a bar or a shelf or maybe a table so you can find your balance. And from here, we're just gonna swing our leg. I'm gonna do my right leg first. Back and forwards 8 times. So, each time, focus on lengthening and kicking long instead of high or in. Okay, now we're going to directly go into our side leg. So here, I'm going to hold on to the bar with both hands. Just like before, we're going to swing our legs 8 times. So here I'm focusing on my right leg, so I'm going to swing it more to the right. You don't need to swing so high for the left. Now we're gonna do the opposite leg, left leg. I'm gonna hold onto a bar with my right arm. And just like the other side, swing it 8 times. Now if 8 is too many, feel free to adapt. Do as many as you like, and if 8 is not enough, you can go way past 8. I'm gonna go directly into my left side leg now. Also 8 times. 1, and 2, and 3, and 4, 5, 6, and 7. Last one, 8. Great job. Thanks for stretching with me! Bye bye! If you like this video, don't forget to like and subscribe. And let us know what stretching routine you'd like to see next.