How you doing Cali Crowd?
About a month ago I set myself the challenge of being able to hold a back lever for five seconds.
For those of you who don't know what a back lever is, it's a skill where
the athlete hangs horizontally suspended from a bar with the back facing upwards,
notably in contrast to a front lever where the front of the body faces upwards.
I was so excited to start learning this skill because it incorporates so many of
the calisthenics fundamentals that I always talk about.
Shoulder mobility and strength, creating full body tension, proprioceptive control...
It's also a gateway to unlocking various other calisthenic skills
that I'm just dying to learn - but I'm getting ahead of myself!
If you haven't seen my video on the day 0 of my back lever training,
I'll link it down in the description below, but spoilers here's my first attempt at a back lever.
So in my first attempt, I could pretty easily hold a tuck back lever which I was very happy with.
I was expecting my shoulders to kick up way more of a fuss by putting them in this
position but they felt fine. I definitely didn't feel like I could extend my legs but
compared to my other day zeros for when I learned skills such as the muscle up
and l-sit for example this was a much better starting point.
From this starting point I decided that I would use skin the cat
and reverse hyper extensions to build some back lever specificity into my strength training.
I also added chin ups to ensure I was strengthening the biceps and relevant
connective tissue which is placed under load at the end range in the back lever.
It was a very simple program that I just tethered onto the back of my pull training sessions.
I imagined I'd need to tweak it eventually but after week
one when it came to retesting my tucked back lever it felt too easy - like stupidly easy.
So I got my bands out and tried a resistance band back lever with a band that displaces 45 kilograms
but that also felt too easy. So I tried with a band that displaces 35 kilograms
which made me work a fair bit harder but I was still shocked at what a week's worth of
progress looked like - which by the way is only two pull strength days for me.
Quick note here, while I was doing that back lever attempt I did feel a very slight twinge in my ribs
which I assumed would be an intercostal strain. Naturally, I stopped pushing it at
this stage - no point in getting injured, and I made sure to incorporate dynamic
intercostal stretches in my warm-ups and I haven't experienced any discomfort since.
Anyways, I told myself that I would continue to test out my back lever training once a week
which I don't usually do with skills but I wanted to see if this steep progress
was going to continue, and at about the start of week 3 I felt like I was in no man's land,
somewhere between slightly needing the support of the band and doing it without the band at all.
Then on day 28 I did this...
While I was over the moon with this back lever, I wasn't happy with both the hold time
as well as the body line I held which was not quite horizontal. Instead of trying to push it
on that day, I reset and attacked the back lever four days later and this happened...
Being able to learn how to back lever in 32 days is actually a little bit awkward for me
because in the past I've criticized sensationalist titles on youtube videos.
We've all seen the youtube video entitled 'I learned how to full planche in 45 minutes',
and on the left we see the image of the guy who is skinny and looks like they
can barely do a push-up and on the right we see the ripped beast doing planches for fun.
What I will say though is that I don't think my back lever progress is normal.
I am very much coming at this from an intermediate level and I believe the steps I took are very
valuable for people looking to learn this skill, but if you struggle to rope together
a few pull-ups or body rows, don't expect to replicate what I have done here in just a month.
I am at a place now where I've been focusing on basic movements for well over a year
and the benefits are really starting to snowball and I can see that in my skill training.
In fact the speed of the completion of this back lever is just further proof
that by focusing on the basic movement patterns
we can derive a stupid amount of strength in calisthenics and ultimately achieve our goals.
Quicker than I thought, that is actually my back lever challenge complete!
But guys, I really want to know what you think. What skills are you guys working towards at the
moment? What are your calisthenics strength goals? Let me know down in the comment section below,
like the video if you found it valuable and enjoyable for you!
And guys, I will see you in the next one!