How to Do Splits Like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion in the ‘WAP’ Music Video

In “WAP,” a music video that can best be described as a Lisa Frank sex fantasy, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, and Normani all do the splits.

Plenty of other stuff happens in the video, which is a feat of oral dexterity in terms of both verse-spitting and implied sexual skill: Cardi and Megan wander through a rococo chateau, alternately writhing with snakes, twerking with tigers, and having a kind of hot girl Oompa Loompa moment in an underground plumbing area. 

They creep through their boob-themed Versailles, peering voyeuristically into rooms where Normani, Rosalía, Rubi Rose, Sukihana, and Mulatto perform ecstatic, erotic movement. Kylie Jenner stalks the halls. At one point, a group dressed in a cannery’s worth of fishnets goes to what looks like the Temple of Dendur room at the Met to dance in a fountain.

And they do the splits. Slick, acrobatic splits, perfectly flat. 

What is it about watching a person rocket toward the ground, sliding into a straight line that provokes an almost physiological reaction? Whether it’s an Olympic gymnast, a Broadway star, or a stripper, something about watching a person slide into the splits makes the heart leap with wonder. It’s like pressing an endorphin release button in your brain–it almost feels as though you are doing the splits.

So how do you get to do the splits? Don’t start by forcing your legs flat, says Donna Flagg, the founder of the Lastics Stretch Technique, a flexibility method that professional dancers use to stretch and strengthen their muscles. If you start your slide and you’re not stretchy enough to touch the floor with your hands when you’re in position, you’ll never get there by just continuing to put pressure on your body. 

“First, you have to get into the muscles around your hips and target them separately—gentle stretching of your inner and outer thighs, hip flexors, and hamstrings will do,” Flagg tells Glamour. Those muscles work together, so you have to target them all to get enough release to find your splits, she says. 

Not everyone has the physical capability of learning to do the splits, according to the expert. “But what’s more common is that people just don’t know how to stretch,” she says. “I have seen shocking things happen in people’s bodies by simply applying some basic, common-sense principles around the idea that bent is not stretched—most people bend where they shouldn’t.” 

That’s often the situation with trying to get into the splits. “When people slide down for front splits, they bend their back knee and rest it on the floor,” Flagg says. “As soon as you do that, you slacken the muscles. But you need them to be taught in order to get the stretch.” 

How long until my pillbox hat and I can do the splits like Normani? It depends on both effort and flexibility, according to Flagg. “I’ve seen it take weeks and I’ve seen it take years,” she says. “Either way, you should expect gradual, incremental progress the same way you would when strengthening a muscle.” 

You don’t bench 150 on the first day of weight training, so don’t expect to slide straight into splits on your first day. Cardi, Megan, Normani, your unbelievably annoying friend who lunges into splits every time there’s even the suggestion of a group picture—they worked for it. 

Every other quarantine ambition slid out of sight when I saw the women of “WAP” drop into splits so smooth their legs look like frosting squeezed straight out of the tube. Can you believe I once wanted to bake some kind of bread product? Or maybe…take time to consider the course of my life and my personal path? No. 

Now, I must shove my legs in opposite directions, like a wishbone being wrenched apart by competitive adult siblings.  It’s officially August of Hot Girl Sad Inside Summer. The only thigh gap that matters is not the space between your right and left legs (which was always bullshit, BTW) but the space between your thighs and the carpet.

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We are under house arrest with nothing to do except the splits. (Well, nothing except try to meet rent in a crisis economy and try to stay emotionally stable during an ongoing global emergency.) 

You heard Cardi and Megan: “I’m going into my [splits practice] dry and coming out of my [splits practice] gushy [with sweat, from trying to do the splits.] / Put him on his knees [so he can see me do my splits from a better angle.] / You can’t hurt my feelings, but I like pain [caused by trying to do the splits.]” 

WAP, WAP, WAP—that’s the sound of a million determined people trying to do the splits. 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Originally Appeared on Glamour