In my previous front lever videos, I wrote down the math equations to show that if you have big
hypertrophied upper body muscles, the front lever will be easier for you. Even though the force
you can generate pound for pound from your big beautiful muscles is less than the force I can
generate pound for pound from my smaller lean muscles, the front lever is easier when the angle
between your torso and your arms is larger. However, there are too many math deniers out
there dismissing the fact that the front lever is indeed more difficult for people like me
though the equations are clearly and transparently written down. A lot of people also want to see me
wear a weight vest to simulate big hypertrophied upper body muscles to see if the front lever would
become easier to prove the math theory. However, there are two points I need to clarify about
this idea. First, it is way more difficult for me wearing a 20-lb vest to do the front lever than a
150-lb guy doing the front lever. Assuming the 20-lb weight vest makes my weight distribution
the same as the hypothetical 150-lb guy, yes, the required angle will become the same, but the 20-lb
weight vest is a deadweight. There are no muscle fibers in them. These 20 lbs do not generate any
pulling force, and on the flip side, my small lean muscles have to work extra harder to carry
these extra weights. The only benefit of the 20- lb weight vest is that it will shift the center of
mass, so I can pull in a favorable larger angle, which allows my small lean muscles to generate
more force. Therefore, don't equate the front lever difficulty of me wearing a 20-lb weight vest
with that of a normal 150-lb guy. Second, for most common exercises, for example, pull-ups, dips, and
squats, the heavier the external weight is, the more difficult they are. The front lever, however,
could be an exception for people who are strong at natural pulling angles. When an external weight
is placed on the upper body while we perform the front lever, it makes the front lever both easier
and harder at the same time. It makes it harder because you have to pull more weight. It makes it
easier because you can have a larger angle between the torso and the arms due to the shift of center
of mass. In order to figure out whether there's a scenario that would make the front lever overall
easier for me, I added an external weight as a variable to the equations I showed in my previous
front lever video and generated a plot. I am not going into detail to derive the equation again.
It should be trivial if you understand the math in my previous front lever video. For this plot,
the x-axis is the angle between my arms and torso for the full front lever and the y-axis is the
amount of body weight I need to hold. As you can see, if it's just my body weight, the required
angle will be 47.673 degrees as I've mentioned in my previous video. However, if I wear a weight
vest that is 0.2 times of my body weight, the angle required will increase to around 56 degrees.
As you can see, the more weight you put on, the more diminishing returns there will be in the
angle you can increase. You might wonder why I draw the y-axis for less than body weight.
There isn't a magical weight vest that can actually decrease your upper body weight. Yes,
you are right, but you will know why in a moment. First, let me overlay this graph with the weight I
can pull with the lat pulldown machine at various angles. I can pull 0.4 times of my body weight at
around 45 degrees, 0.9 times of my body weight at around 50 degrees, and 1.2 times of my body weight
at around 55 degrees. As you can see, the red line is actually above the blue line in this region,
so that means I should be able to do the full front lever if I put on a little less than 0.2
times of body weight through the weight vest to make the angle 55 degrees, right? Not so fast yet,
the numbers I can pull on the lat pulldown machine are actually an overly optimistic estimate.
The front lever is actually the equivalent of pulling on the lat pulldown machine and doing
a dragon flag at the same time. Even though I can do the dragon flag without training for it,
it is still far from being effortless. You might argue that the muscles for doing the lat pulldown
and the dragon flag are different, so why is this a problem? The muscles involved for doing the lat
pulldown and the dragon flag are mostly different, but not completely different, not to mention other
factors in play, such as the nervous system. As a result, the max load of doing both at the same
time will absolutely be lower than that of doing each of them individually. If you still don't
believe me, you can try to test your max one-arm dumbbell row and then test your max one-arm
overhead press. Now do both at the same time with each arm, and I guarantee you won't be able to do
it. Since there isnt a way for me to measure how much weight I can pull on the lat pulldown machine
while doing a dragon flag, the best thing I can do is trial and error and figure out if there's
any moment when the real red line will be above the blue line. Unfortunately, I can't find it,
but I really want to show the math deniers that math is a fact that you can't deny. Therefore,
I decided to plot another green line to represent the situation of the straddle front lever
and did my best to estimate the extra weight that would give me a chance, and this happened.
Obviously, my form isn't perfect. My hips are sagging a bit, and I only hold it for 4 seconds
instead of 5 seconds, but this video is not about me claiming I learned a particular skill. Instead,
it's a video that demonstrates math and physics are indeed correct for the science deniers,
so this is plenty enough in my book. Of course, if I take off the weight vest, I am nowhere close
to doing the straddle front lever because the angle will have to be way smaller. The angle
I am at for achieving the weighted straddle front lever is around 59 degrees with a weight vest that
is almost 0.2 times of my body weight, so we can roughly draw a guesstimate black line here on what
would be the weight I could pull on a lat pulldown machine if it were possible to do a dragon flag
at the same time. In any case, now it's time to address a repeated misconception in my previous
front lever video. A lot of people who haven't been able to do the front lever yet think they
can skip the DEXA scan and find out their angle between the arms and torso by using a resistance
band to support right underneath the bar. No. That doesn't work. The resistance band will stop
you from swinging, even if your center of mass is not underneath the bar. Instead of explaining it
through math equations, I will explain it in a way that you will for sure understand. First, instead
of putting the resistance band underneath your waist, move all the way forward, so the resistance
band will become underneath your shoulders, so now we have no doubt that your center of mass is not
underneath the bar. Now imagine the support from the resistance band is actually pretty strong,
you know, strong enough that it feels like a ground. Can you not swing and hold this position?
Of course! Because this is literally the dragon flag. If you can't do the front lever, and you
want to find out your required angle, don't be cheap. Go do a DEXA scan. There's no way around
it. I also want to thank again to all the strong calisthenics athletes who reached out to me,
acknowledged that the front lever is indeed more difficult for my body type,
and still tried their best to help me overcome this disadvantage. As for all the "train hard,
be strong, don't be not strong" math deniers, I don't know what else I can do to convince you
that the front lever difficulty highly depends on different body types. It's not about, just train
harder, bro. How would you feel when you struggled to understand the math at school and I walked up
to you and say: "Just study hard, bro,"? Another thing I want to address is that not wanting to
build big hypertrophied muscles is my personal choice. I don't want to mess with my diet,
and I still need to rock climb. Big upper body mass will make achieving the front lever easier,
but it will make rock climbing more difficult. I have nothing against most of you who want those
big beautiful muscles, but if you came and rock climbed with those big beautiful muscles and ended
up struggling to hold yourself on the wall with your fingers, how would you feel if I walked up
to you and told you: "Just climb harder, bro,"? There is also another accusation that I need to address.
"I really think that he is sending a pretty bad message to the impressionable young atheletes
that are watching his videos. Geek Climber is basically saying that if you don't think you can
do something, just don't do it. And I really think that no matter what people say or whatever science
even dictates, if you want to be able to acheive something, you should be able to work for it, and
prove everybody wrong. And I don't know if this is going to be a controversial or a hot take, but the
front lever is not really a very challenging skill to perform. It's really not that hard." Wo wo wo,
are you serious? Of course, we should encourage kids to be ambitious and aim for big grand things,
but at the same time we should also let them understand basic science and facts to accurately
assess where they are at. If you blindly encourage a short kid by saying: "Yeah, kid, keep spending
your time on basketball, you will make it to the NBA some day," in my opinion, this is what will
have a real negative impact on the kid. If you are going to argue with me that if the kid knows that
the science and facts are stacked against him, it will somehow affect him mentally. Then it
just means we should help the kid to work on his mental game instead of sugarcoating the situation.
Let me drive this point home, using myself as an example. If you look around on YouTube on
climbing and calisthenics back in 2017 before my channel even existed, there is not a single
YouTuber that looks remotely like me, and on top of that, I have a huge language handicap.
I acknowledged all the disadvantages but did I let them affect me mentally? No! Guess what,
I did the impossible and is sitting on 200k subscribers right now. On the flip side,
did I dismiss the disadvantages and pretend they did not exist? No! I wasn't dumb enough
to quit my full-time job to go all in on YouTube in the climbing and calisthenics niche. For all
the kids and young athletes out there watching my videos, the Western philosophy of being ambitious,
aiming high, and chasing the dream are all great, but you also need a bit of Eastern philosophy of
understanding basic science and being practical at times to get the best of both worlds. Best of luck
to your very bright future. Lastly, am I going to continue to train for the front lever? Yes, but I
am not going to focus on it. There are still a lot more calisthenics moves that are more achievable
for my body type that I haven't achieved yet. I would rather focus on those first. Thanks for
watching. If you appreciate this kind of science based content instead of the conventional "train
hard, be strong, don't be not strong" content, definitely consider supporting my latest 5Bar
venture. A lot of thought went into the formulation of 5Bar. I take the nutrient profile,
the taste, and the amount of calories into consideration when creating 5Bar. I also want
to thank everyone who purchased it and spread the word with their friends. Definitely check
out the link in the video description below to order some 5Bars. See you in the next video.