Well first of all, most of those girls probably started some form of that position from an early age. I’ve heard of parents not allowing their children to practice ballet or the such like due to potentially causing mobility problems down the line. It’s a double edged sword… start early and you can achieve these positions, but you may learn say a collapsed ankle position, or lack of motor control due to having too much ROM.

If your friend wants to hit that position now, she just needs to keep working at it. A good place to start is simply being in that position more throughout the day. If I want to work on the bottom of my squat, I sit in the bottom position of the squat multiple times a day. After that, lots of smashing, banded distractions, voodoo flossing anything and everything in the area. Best of luck!

Standing isn’t an answer to sitting, neither would be leaning. Sedentary is sedentary. The best option is just to stay as active as possible. I switched to a standing desk about a year ago and have tried many different setups. Pure standing became hard to manage over long periods of time, and a leaning stool ended up causing me knee pain. I have finally settled on a home-made multi tiered box setup that offers me a number of positions to use while working. I can go one leg at a time into deep hip flexion, I can do either leg in pigeon, i can reverse ballerina, I can even step up on to the top and sit in the bottom of my squat at my standing desk. I can even just sit, but since it’s made of wood it isn’t comfortable enough to sit for too long which forces me to change it up. This is the best option so far that I have found and it allows me to actually get more mobile while working. Hope this helps.

On the top right you can click “my account” and you should be able to see all your favorite videos in there

Don’t buy any anchors guys just simply use a bath towel folded once or twice, wrap the band around the towel and wedge in closed door. I have been doing this for a few months now and it works like a charm. You can put at the top of the door for overhead work or lower for hips and ankles. You could snap a broom or damage your walls but a towel holds the tension and won’t cause damage

This has also been an issue for me. I feel that taking a wider stance while keeping all the same principles active for a good squat will allow your foot to remain on the ground while you deal with the mobility of your ankle.

Try everything you can on and around the ankle but for me hitting this area seems to really help:
http://www.mobilitywod.com/2013/09/pro-episode-44-the-last-25-of-your-ankle-restriction-snatches-and-pistols-here-we-come/

Except I use a lax ball with as much pressure as I can get. There have been a few videos with a KB as well which should work even better.

It’s funny how it works though. Start solving one problem (externally rotating hip during squat) and open up a few new problems (foot not staying flat, groin tightness, etc)