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Jade Split Progress

Why the Jade? It is one of the relatively easy split moves that you can start learning once you’re confident with your Gemini/Scorpio/Pike. But more importantly, it always gets a WOW from the crowd. I remember how happy I was, once I managed to hold it. The split however looked much more like V rather than a straight line.

Is your flexibility important to get there? Definitely. However, without a proper hold no matter how great your splits are, you’ll simply end up on the floor. So to succeed you should focus on the hold, without it you’ll never be confident enough with your Jade. Once you've secured your grip on the pole, it's time to start bringing that front leg down. If you are not a flexibility queen the first result may look more like a V, which doesn't mean it's bad, but that you are on a right track and will need just a bit more time to get that Jade straight. Another way to make it look good is to bend your back leg: same hold, but no need for a full split.

May 2015. Just got the Jade. So happy, even though it's nowhere near how proper Jade supposed to look like


January 2016. As you can see. It took A LOT of time to improve and it's still not quite there yet. Still a massive step up from where I started.

Not sure if it’s just me, but with lots of moves my good hold side is also my bad split side (oops!). For me personally it’s way easier to train a move on the bad side, than struggle with my left split trying to touch the floor. Plus, it’s that extra motivation to finally start working on that bad side!

Unfortunately progress doesn't happen in an instant. It took me 9 months to get to the point where I was happy with my Jade. It's all about not giving up and moving forward at your own pace. Then one day you'll realize that a move that seem next to impossible to perform is actually really easy.


I still can’t hold Jade variation, so will need to create a separate post for it
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Location: 10 Newton Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland 1010, New Zealand

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