(upbeat music)
- What's up, Elite Calisthenics Athletes?
It's Chris Heria.
I'm here with Shawn Elozano and in 2017,
we made a video on how to L-sit.
We showed you the progressions from first getting started
all the way to mastering the L-sit on the dip bars.
Well today I'm gonna be going more in depth
into your L-sit showing you how you can improve your L-sit
and also start mastering your L-sit on the floor.
You ready, Shawn?
- Let's do it.
- Alright, perfect so four important components
to keep in mind before we get started.
Flexibility, hip flexor strength, core strength,
and shoulder depression strength.
These are the four components that we're gonna need
to master our L-sit especially from an advanced position
like the floor.
When an L-sit is performed on the floor,
those same floor components are a necessity
and that's why we're gonna be breaking those down today.
Working each component of your L-sit individually
to then put it all together and master it.
If Shawn over here masters his L-sit,
eventually he's gonna open up the doors
to a lot more harder moves.
The muscle-ups, pull-overs, handstands.
When it comes to calisthenics,
a lot of the fundamental movements
that you learn from the beginning are then transferred over
into harder more advanced movements
or sometimes those are the progressions
to be able to even start learning those moves.
For example, if you want to learn how to muscle-up,
front lever, well it's basically a requirement
to know how to do an L-sit.
So master the L-sit and you're gonna find yourself
progressing a whole lot faster
and find yourself being capable
of doing a lot more advanced exercises
you couldn't do before.
Now before starting this move,
it's important that your body is flexible enough
to have the range of motion necessary
to be able to perform the L-sit with perfect form.
You're gonna need hip flexor strength
for the elevation of your legs to be able
to hold your feet up, legs straight
and keeping your body in the right angled position.
And of course, core strength is needed
to be able to hold that isometric position.
And what ties this all together is having the strength
in your shoulders, depress them down to be able
to lock your body into this position and hold this position.
And it's probably one of the most important things
when it comes to perfect form and especially
when trying it on the floor because this
is what's gonna give you that elevation off that ground
so we're gonna break down those four components today.
I'm gonna show you some progressions
and hopefully we can get Shawn's L-sit a whole lot nicer.
So you ready to get started, Shawn?
- Yeah, let's do it.
- Alright, so first things first.
Let's work on our flexibility.
We're gonna start with some warm-ups, some stretches.
It's gonna have you stretch your hip flexors
as well as your hamstrings and this is what really need
to be warmed up to really get into these L-sit exercises.
(dramatic music)
So first thing's first, is flexibility.
Work on your flexibility.
Do the right stretches and the right warm ups
before actually training your L-sit
and this is gonna make it a whole lot easier.
It's gonna help you hold your L-sit a lot easier as well.
So now I wanna bring you guys and Shawn
through a series of L-sit progressions
that's gonna cover your hip flexor, core
and shoulder depression strength.
Now these progressions you can do anywhere.
You can do in your house or your room
but these progressions are gonna take you
from the very beginning all the way to mastering your L-sit.
Training the key components of the L-sit
and eventually building up your strength
to eventually being able to do it on the floor
which is a lot more advanced.
You're gonna need a lot more
of all those components I just mentioned
to be able to do it there.
But once you can do it on the floor,
that's when the real strength starts coming.
So that's where exactly where we're gonna start today.
We're gonna start against the wall on the floor.
The first progression is gonna be assisted L-sit holds
on the floor, let's check this out.
This is what I want you to do.
We're gonna be working on our hip flexors
with this movement.
You're gonna have your back close up against the wall
and this is gonna help you keep your back straight
and your form straight.
As you can see I'm in that L-sit position,
I'm in that 90 degree angle, my legs are straight,
my shoulders are pinched back and my back is flat
against the wall just like this.
So from this position right here,
we're gonna push our hands down, depress our shoulders,
and we're gonna lift our legs.
Keep pointing your toes as hard as you can
and come right back down.
So this is working your hip flexors
as well as the beginning steps
to training your shoulder depressions.
So you're gonna be depressing the shoulders down
and lifting the tips of your toes up,
keeping your legs as straight as possible.
So I want you to come try this with me.
I want you to push the shoulders down
and just bring up just your legs.
So just your heels should be reaching off the ground.
When you're doing this try to point your toes
and try to keep your feet tight together,
as tight as you can as if your feet were tied together
with some rope so you don't want
to leave any space in between.
Perfect.
Alright, so once you've been training this move for a while,
you can do at least 10 pumps in a row,
then you're ready to hold this move
and this is gonna be the assisted L-sit hold.
It's gonna look like that.
So you just wanna hold it for time.
Go ahead and try that.
There you go, point your toes.
So you see we're working each move individually.
Right now, you're focusing on just the hip flexors
to be able to bring your feet up to that L-sit position
and we'll worry about lifting our bodies,
depressing the shoulders and the core after.
But if you train all the elements individually,
you're gonna get good at each move individually.
You'll piece it all together.
In fact if you're having trouble
just being able to move two legs at the same time,
try one leg at a time first.
So have one leg pointed, bring one leg up.
And try the other one.
Hold if you can.
Eventually you'll work that hip flexor strength.
You'll be able to do both at the same time.
So you wanna try that real quick?
One at a time.
That feels more possible, right?
- Yeah, it's a lot easier.
- Yeah, so you work up your reps
and you work up your strength with this
and you'll eventually increase for when it's a lot harder.
Alright so once you're able to get this down,
we worked on our hip flexors.
We know now actually how to position ourselves properly
from our back to our hips to our feet.
We're gonna move on to the next progression
and we're gonna add some more core strength
and some more shoulder depression strength.
Alright, let's go.
So this next move I'm gonna show you is the tucked L-sit.
Now we covered the tucked L-sit in the last video we did
on how to L-sit, but this time we're gonna be changing
where we're doing it and this is gonna make a big difference
in your tucked L-sit and your L-sit overall.
If you're just getting started,
you can go ahead and use a more elevated surface.
This is gonna give more room for your legs
and it also uses lot less hip flexor strength.
So it's a great place to start, increase that strength,
and then make it to the floor
which is how I really want you to do it.
But first, let's go ahead and check how we do it on the box.
So, tucked L-sit, you wanna hold an L-sit,
tuck your legs, lift up from the palms,
depress the shoulders, activate your core,
activate hip flexors.
Chin up, bring your back straight.
So now with this move,
you're beginning to work all four components
of the L-sit together.
So go ahead and try this one for me.
So remember keep that core tight from the very beginning.
Chin up, knees down, lean a little forward.
And depress those shoulders.
There you go, chin up.
There you go.
Perfect.
Hold that.
Perfect, breathe, breathe, that's super important.
If you're not breathing,
you're gonna come down a lot sooner.
Good.
So when you start to breathe, you start to hold it longer.
That was excellent.
So this is a micro version of that L-sit,
but you can already see it's working the same components.
Your shoulders are to back and depressed.
You wanna start pushing those hips through your body
and of course you're activating your core
to be able to keep your legs up.
And if you were actually to fully extend your legs,
then you would be emphasizing more on the flexibility
and the hip flexors which we're getting there,
but first you wanna master it right here.
You're gonna build up some more strength
and you won't be struggling through the process.
In fact, when you master it right here
now we're gonna decrease the amount of leg room you have
which is gonna make it a whole lot harder.
You're gonna have to now use more flexibility
in hip flexor but this is the way it should be done
and this is the more advanced version.
Now you can start with some parallettes,
'cause this is still gonna elevate you
and it's gonna increase the amount of depression
and it's gonna give you more room
to be able to do this movement.
And if you don't have any parallettes,
you can go ahead and pick some up at thenx.com/shop,
or you can just get a couple books
and stack 'em up evenly beside each other,
but the whole point is to be a couple inches off the ground.
So doing the same components in the tucked L-sit on the box,
we're now gonna do it with less room
of our legs on the ground.
(upbeat music)
Alright, Shawn.
Let's go ahead and give that a try.
Alright so you wanna bring your knees to your chest
and then from here you wanna lean back,
depress the shoulders, keep your knees up
and be leaning back the whole time.
Alright, there you go activate that core.
Perfect.
So, I would advise you from at this point
of your fitness level and strength to max this one out.
Try that at least three times in a row 'til failure.
And once you've done that, then move immediately
on to up here and do it again three times until failure.
That would basically be one set.
If you can do that five sets that would be a good routine
to start off based on your fitness level
where you are right now.
Of course you'd want to add in the flexibility as well,
but let's keep moving through the progressions
and let's see how far you can go.
So once you can do it on the parallettes,
of course the way to make this harder
is to eliminate how much space you're off the ground.
So doing it with just your hands on the floor
would eventually be the final progression
and the real way to do the tucked L-sit hold.
Alright, so we're gonna move onto the next progression now.
Tucked, L-sit walks.
So come down here with me.
Very similar to the way you got into that position.
We're gonna start this move.
Now let's make some space.
Alright, we're gonna walk forward.
So first let me show you how to do it.
From this position, you're gonna bring your knees
to your chest, depress those shoulders
and bring your body forward.
You wanna control this move as much as you can.
Try to be as slow motion as possible.
Start with the lean forward,
press and depress your shoulders
and then start to lean back as you move forward.
So it would be like forward, leaning back.
Yeah this is a pretty tough move,
so what you can do is keep your legs on the floor
and try to move by lifting and raising your hips.
So you can practice depressing your shoulders.
That's the main point.
Eventually you put less and less pressure on your heels
and you'll be able to lift your whole entire body.
You just have to do it with the intentions
of raising your knees to your chest
while you're moving forward and depressing your scapulars.
Alright so I'm gonna walk you
through one more progression, L-sit kicks.
So this is gonna start from that tucked position.
Now for a second you're gonna go into the L-sit
and come right back.
When you first start doing this movement,
you might start kicking pretty rapidly,
but the goal is to try to do it as controlled as possible
with the intention of trying to slow yourself down.
Eventually doing it in slow motion if you can,
'cause if you can you'll be able to just stick your legs out
and eventually just hold that L-sit in that perfect form.
But either way kicking in and out
is working those hip flexors tremendously
as well as remaining in that position
with your depressed shoulders is gonna build solid strength
so you're not gonna be moving around in your L-sit at all
because you're moving around when you're doing this move
so imagine when you finally apply that,
you're gonna be really solid for your L-sit.
So I want you to try this real quick.
Just start in that tucked position, knees to chest,
depressing those shoulders, looking forward,
pushing those hips through, leaning slightly back
and you're gonna kick out and in.
Perfect.
Keep it going, chin up.
Gotta keep the chin up bro.
See as you can see, chin up fixes everything else.
Keep it going.
Chin up, look forward straight at the wall.
You got this.
Perfect, perfect.
Excellent, bro.
As you can see, the things that you're missing
in your L-sit are things that we just worked on today.
So if you were able to perform the stretches
and the progressions more efficiently,
then you can see how that would transcend
into what you're doing right now
which is why it's important to practice these progressions
and then what you're doing to get to that point
is gonna be a whole lot easier.
But it also means that you're not that far away
from mastering your L-sit.
Remember, L-sit on this box and L-sit on the floor
is a whole lot harder than L-sitting on the dip bar
and that's what we're working toward
because if you can do it on the box and on the floor,
the type of strength that you're going to acquire
from being able to do this is gonna transfer over
into everything else
and you're gonna get a whole lot stronger
and you're gonna start advancing super quick
like you already are.
And remember those of you watching,
once you can do this movement on the box,
you wanna go ahead and be able to do it
on the parallels and eventually on the floor
with the least amount of space as possible.
(upbeat music)
Alright, so I do have one more progression to show you.
L-sit hold alternating legs.
Now we're gonna be able to focus on how to remain locked out
with our legs while holding that L-sit,
but if you do it one leg at a time,
it's gonna be easier to focus on,
it's gonna be easier to start increasing the technique
and eventually acquiring perfect form in both your legs.
You'll eventually be able to do them together.
So let me show you really quick what that looks like.
Come up in the tucked L-sit,
put one leg as straight as you can.
Keep those shoulders depressed, core tight.
Alright, so that's the last progression,
and of course once you can do it here,
you should go ahead and do it on the parallettes
and eventually be able to do it on the ground.
Now those are pretty tough
so of course I'm not gonna have you do that one,
because if we can do that,
you can basically already do your L-sit,
but after going through all these progressions,
you should have definitely learned
how to properly engage your shoulders, engage your core,
know how to keep your legs straight
and know how to activate your hip flexors
so you should at least be able to do an L-sit
on these parallel bars for at least three to five seconds.
You've got this, bro.
Remember to breathe.
Chin up, look forward.
Follow through with your hips.
Excellent.
Excellent, keep it going, keep it going.
That is excellent, bro.
Insane.
Insane, look at this guy.
Crazy, crazy.
That was impressive.
- That was really hard.
- Damn, that was honestly a lot better
than I thought you were going to do.
And those were straight lines.
Straight lines is a must when it comes L-sits
and a must when it comes calisthenics, perfect form.
So yeah it's safe to say that you're definitely on your way
to mastering your L-sit.
If you guys were able to follow along,
then you should also be on your way to mastering your L-sit
if not you already mastered it.
So with that said, Shawn.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate you, brother.
And you guys, thank you so much for watching.
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(upbeat music)