hey guys Daniel here for fitness a fake use in this video I'm going to be explaining how to
progress from being a beginner to learning how to master the full back lever position so the
back lever is one of the fundamental exercises in gymnastics whereby you'll be developing the
necessary tendon ligament and body alignment strength necessary to progress on to more
challenging and exciting exercises in the future so in this video I will be talking about how to
warm up for the back lever to prepare the body to safely undergo the stresses this exercise involves
the body tension body queues necessary to hold the position various progressions to utilize to help
you obtain the full back lever position as well as the sets and whole durations that I'd recommend so
let's get to it for the white we'll be doing three things so the seated shoulder dislocates German
hang lowers and finally the German hang hold so I'll show you what I mean right now first of all
seated shoulder dislocates I prefer to do these seated because it prevents you from falling into
that lumbar over extension which is very common if you really want to do the standing variation you
can do that as well two ways of progressing with this movement hands closer together or
adding more weight to the movement next up we have the German hang holds so once you guys to
try to accumulate thirty Seconds here try to focus on scapular retraction so trying to squeeze your
shoulder blades together focus on breathing and we're trying to improve that shoulder extension
position the next one is the German hang lowers so this is just a good way of getting some of
that dynamic movement prior to doing the exercise within the range of motion which is specific to
the exercise so shoulder extension this picture here just indicates the distance apart the Rings
should be so approximately fifty centimeters the other important tip is to chalk up this is
going to help you guys out so much when you're doing ring hold speck lives so in terms of body
tension and cues the really important ones are scapular protraction squeezing the hands
towards the glutes so scapular depression and glute and abdominal engagement so here I'm just
demonstrating protraction right now and retraction so during a back lever the column the stack that
people do is a fall into scapular retraction which makes the exercise much higher than it
needs to be so ideally you want to be in this position right here scapular protraction and
depression this is going to make the back lever much much easier to hold and it's something that
beginners tend to not do correctly so first I'm going to demonstrate a incorrect back lever as you
can see it's almost like a banana shape sure you can hold it you're going to make it much harder
for yourself so this would be the ideal way to do it I'm squeezing my hands towards my glutes
maintaining scapular protraction and trying to engage my gluts and abdominals so progressing
onto the actual progressions themselves starting with the Tuck back lever so knees close to the
chest moving on to the advanced tuck back lever so you flatten out your back a helpful thing to
do during this one guys is to try and keep your heels to your bum just helps with overall tension
development the next one I like to do is called advanced back lever open where the legs are open
following that you can move on to a straddle back lever which is a fair bit higher than the
previous one if you've got a decent straddle you can make this much easier for yourself this final
one just bridges the gap between the straddle and the full back lever so you have your toes
pointing up towards the sky and after you've worked on that for a while you can just move
straight on to the full-back lever but the thing is about the back lever is you if you can develop
the tension for this the necessary tension you should have no problem with this one the final
thing I'd like to show you guys and I encourage you to do is called back lever lifts so choose
whichever progression you're currently up to lower down into the back lever hold it momentarily then
raise up into an inverted hang and repeat for repetitions now in terms of how to train for
the back lever once you've determined which progression you're up to you want to do the
back lever training three days a week you want to hold the back lever during your training sets of
around 8 to 12 seconds and performing 3 to 5 sets so once you can do 5 sets of 12 seconds on a given
progression fairly comfortably time to move on to a harder progression and repeat the process
while you are doing these back lever holds it'll be worth your while to including back lever lifts
performing 3 sets of 3 to 4 repetitions similar thing as before you may find you'll have to do
this on an easier progression to ensure that you are within the set and repetition range before I
finish up this video I just want to mention again the importance of understanding the body tension
and body cues that I mentioned earlier make sure that you apply them to your training understand
them understand how your body works more in terms of the protraction and you'll find that over time
you'll be able to develop a very solid back lever with those key points in mind and that's the end
of the video if you did enjoy it give it a like if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask
in the comment section below and I will see you guys in the next video thanks for watching