Flexibility: Breaking down splits Part 1

Sitting in splits is probably the LEAST effective way to increase your flexibility for them. Sure, doing this repetitively will get results eventually and increase where you were when you started however, breaking down splits into smaller muscle group stretches will increase your flexibility faster.
Jamie and I (Andrea) coached the annual MAG (men's artistic gymnastics) provincial level training camp this past December. Most of what we do is a combination of active and passive stretching in each stretch to get the benefit of both.
We would get the boys to show us their splits and then walk them through a series of stretches (approximately 35 mins) and then they would try their splits afterwards. I'm going to say that 60% of the boys had a significant change in their splits, and some of those boys had HUGE change. The other 40% were already pretty flexible and saw change but maybe not as significant. When I say the word change, I'm not just talking about how many inches they are off the floor. I'm talking about how square they can sit, are their shoulders over top of their hips and facing forward? Are they tense, in pain and making the "flex face"?

This is my son. This is his "flex face"

The boys that saw huge change were blown away when they did their splits at the end of their time with us. They might not have been flat but moving into splits was easy and it wasn't painful to sit in them anymore. 

Here's the first video in our Breaking Down Splits series. The elevated lunge. Adding height to any stretch will allow the athlete to use their own body weight to increase the intensity.