How are you doing cali crowd
Last week marked the end of the challenge I set myself with the
handstand, by finally achieving a frog - handstand and holding it for 10 seconds.
There is still A LOT of work that I want to do to sure up shop on my handstand skills so
that journey is still very much NOT over, but I’m also conscious that I
diverted a lot of my efforts in calisthenics to focus on handstands over the last year,
So I want to let you know what skill I’ll be pursuing
next and as you’ll probably have already guessed by the title, it is the back lever.
The back lever as a skill is one that drastically excites me because of just
the amount of tension involved in being able to do this skill.
The amount of force going through the shoulders, the biceps, the glutes, the hamstrings,
the lower back... If we talk about building strength and building muscle as time under
tension, all you have to do is just look at the amount of tension in a back lever
and get really excited about what sort of strength this skill could help unlock
so as you can tell I'm really excited to get started with this skill but
calling this video a day zero is actually a little bit of a misnomer to title this video a day 0, as
I am not actually starting from 0 anymore.
When I filmed the day 0 videos for learning to l-sit, muscle up and handstand, it very much
felt like I was starting from nothing, but I am hoping that I will finally start to see the
benefits of all that hard work from the other skills spill over into my back lever training.
Before I get into what I am going to do to unlock the backlever,
or even defining what my back lever goal is,
it’ll probably be prudent to tell you why I have decided to go with the back lever as a skill next.
Well, like I said, working towards skills such as the l-sit, muscle up and handstand
have really developed that base of strength that I always go on about,
but there are still a mountain of skills that I still want to pursue as a calisthenics athlete
Skills like the handstand push up, 90 degree push up, front lever, and the big bad scary planche…
All skills that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to put my name in the same sentence as,
and yet a year ago, I couldn’t do an l-sit so to hell with limiting beliefs.
More to the point, I expect that by gunning for the back lever,
It will bring me closer to developing some these skills
in ways that will still allow me to stay in my lane as what I can
only describe as an aggressively intermediate calisthenics athlete.
So where am I starting from with the back lever?
Before setting a goal, it’s always good to baseline where you’re at so you can assess
where your weak points are - of which the back lever felt like there wasn’t actually that many.
Here's my first attempt at a back lever
I definitely struggled with the idea of pulling in this position. The idea
of my hands being both behind me and above me really messed with my head.
I also had to consciously ensure I wasn’t shrugging my shoulders in this position,
and instead pushing my shoulders away from my ears in scapula depression
But other than that, I was still insanely happy.
A tuck back lever on day zero is more than I could have asked for
So next up is my programming - my plan of attack for the back lever
When I did my first back lever attempt, another thing I was very aware of was
that my shoulders felt very fine despite me expecting them to feel like a problem.
While learning to handstand, I put myself through loads of conditioning drills for shoulder
mobility, and so these are going to be something I definitely continue into my back lever days.
An obvious way to make these drills more applicable to the
back lever would be to throw in skin the cat into the mix too.
With Skin the cat for high quality reps thrown into my programming, the intention is to be
able to develop these into back lever raises over time as well as maintaining good shoulder health.
I will also be working on chin up.
In the back lever, we pull our bodyweight with our arms full extended.
This places loads of stress on the biceps in a position they are weak in, so I’ll be
using chin ups to develop bicep strength as well as for connective tissue conditioning.
And finally, I’ll be working on applicable core
strength with these reverse leg lifts to build up my lower back and glutes.
And as you may have noticed that I have not mentioned the tuck back
lever anywhere in my programming despite literally just doing one to demonstrate
where my baseline was - where my starting point is.
Well, on that point, when I was learning to L-sit,
I found that dynamic movements helped so much more with building strength for static skills,
so while I will use in the odd tuck back lever to really assess how my progress
is going from time to time, it certainly won't feature as a staple in my programming
So what is my back lever goal? what does success look like?
Well, this is a really simple one.
My plan is to hold a fully straight back lever,
for 5 seconds. If I can do that, I will call this a success.
I'm still yet to define what I prefer doing the back lever on; rings or just the straight bar,
but I expect I'll be able to tease that out as I start learning an developing the back lever itself
And that is pretty much it, as always I will use this channel to track my progress and let
you know what I'm doing - what I've learned, the ups and downs of that journey as well.
If you want to check out my other progress diaries, then you can do
so with any of these playlists.- I'm starting to get a few of them now
Like the video if you enjoyed it as it really really helps out the channel,
and, guys, I will see you in the next one!