- What's up, it's Chris Heria.
Welcome to another vlog.
Today I'm gonna be talking about why so many people
can't L-sit or are struggling with it.
I'll also be covering the benefits of being able to L-sit
and, of course, what steps you can start taking right now
to master your L-sit from home without any equipment.
Now to start off, the L-sit is a fundamental to calisthenics
that comes with numerous benefits.
And one of the main benefits to this exercise
is being introduced into manipulating and lifting
your own body weight while maintaining core engagement,
stability, and using your whole body as a unit
to perform this exercise.
The L-sit hold is actually a stepping stone to improving
all other exercises as well as progressing on
to harder, more advanced exercises.
And that's because of the core strength and control
that you develop from being able to do this exercise.
Your core plays a major role in every exercise you do
by helping you balance and stabilize
your body in any direction.
So the stronger your core is gonna be,
the more it can assist in every other exercise you do
and the better you'll be to efficiently
perform every other exercise.
And that's gonna help you increase
your repetitions and overload,
which is gonna give you more strength and gains overall.
However, if you have a weak core,
that can actually hinder your performance
and lead to injury.
In fact, the most common injuries due
to a weak core is back injuries.
Manipulating or lifting your body weight from this position
is actually the starting point,
or at least stems off from a lot of
other advanced exercises
like the front lever, handstand pushups,
muscle up, and even planche.
Now one of the main reasons why people can't L-sit
is because they literally think they can't do it.
And as long as you think that you can't do it,
you're never gonna try to do it.
But once you stop thinking that you can't
and you start thinking that you can,
with the right progressions
you're gonna start to see progress and real results.
And you'll start to understand how possible
it actually is for anyone to learn this exercise.
The L-sit hold is actually an exercise
relatively quick to learn,
but regardless of how many years
you've been training in the gym.
If you've never trained for that L-sit
or never really worked any of its progressions,
chances are you're not gonna be able
to do one right off the bat.
On your first day of weight training,
it's very unlikely that you're just gonna
walk into the gym and start bench pressing
your own body weight.
So you shouldn't expect to just automatically
be able to L-sit without having some prior training
or training it for some time.
Most people that train at the gym many not be used
to training body weight exercises.
And most gym routines require minimum mobility
and, therefore, likely won't have a significant
improvement on your flexibility,
which will not help you in attempting
to L-sit for the first time.
However, if you train calisthenics,
because you're always using your own body weight,
you get accustomed to controlling your own body.
Improving your strength and mobility,
which translates into other calisthenics exercises
as well as weight lifting exercises.
Making it more effective to progress onto harder exercises.
Additionally, when training calisthenics
you're always using a regression
or progression of a harder exercise.
Meaning all the exercises you do are relative
to being capable to do the next and harder exercise,
which is why doing an L-sit hold may come more natural
to somebody that's been training calisthenics already.
If you've already been training calisthenics,
chance are you've been using regressions and progressions
to the L-sit anyway.
And additionally, because you've been using
your own body weight to train,
you're gonna be more conditioned
to manipulating your own body weight,
making this exercise a lot easier.
Now the L-sit requires a moderate amount of core strength,
but also shoulder strength,
hip flexor strength,
and hamstring flexibility
to elevate your legs to a 90 degree, horizontal position.
So lacking in any of these areas
could be another reason as to why
you're struggling with the L-sit,
but I'm gonna show you how to fix and improve
all these areas with today's routine.
First, I'm gonna cover how to start improving your mobility
and then I'm gonna start walking you
through the progressions that are gonna have
you reach and master your L-sit hold.
But before we get started,
to make sure you can properly follow along,
make sure you have this routine on your phone
by downloading the Heria Pro App
in the App Store or Google Play Store.
Open up to the YouTube workout section,
you should find this routine.
We're ready to get started.
Now, starting off with mobility,
the first thing that you can do
to improve your range of motion
is simply just to touch your toes.
And the first way we're gonna do that
to make sure that we can lock out each leg
to be able to do this is to cross your legs over.
Doing this is gonna force you to lock out your back leg
and you just wanna go down as low as you can.
Now, once you're as low as you can go down comfortably,
I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose
and then exhale through your mouth,
and then go lower.
(exhaling)
You're gonna see every time you do that,
you're gonna be able to go down lower and lower.
So we're gonna do that three times.
All right, let's go ahead and switch our leg position.
So we're gonna go down as low as we can.
Breathe in.
(exhaling)
Exhale and go down deeper.
And you wanna do that three times on this leg.
So doing that mobility exercise
will help you to keep your legs straight
and also increase your range of motion.
And eventually, you'll be able to just
put your feet together,
maintain a lock out position,
and be able to go deeper from here.
And you can also do the same breathing technique
with your legs side by side.
So, breathe in through your nose then exhale.
(exhaling)
You'll be able to drop down lower.
All right, the next mobility exercise,
we'll be doing the same thing from a seated position.
So let's go ahead and take a seat.
We're gonna go ahead and try to reach our toes
and you go as far as you can comfortably.
Then you breathe in and then exhale.
(exhaling)
You'll be able to go down lower.
(exhaling)
Now, of course, while you're doing this,
it will help if you're pointing your toes
instead of pointing your heels
and maintaining your legs in a locked out position.
Another thing that would help is if you grab your ankles.
And the further down you hold your ankles,
the more you'll compress and increase your range of motion.
So those are the three exercises that you can use
to increase your mobility for the L-sit hold
that you could be doing simultaneously
while you work your way up the progressions
that I'm about to show you
to reach your L-sit hold.
Now the best way to train when you're trying
to learn something new is to attempt
the exercise or a progression of the exercise
as best as you can every minute on the minute
for at least 15 minutes,
or until you start breaking your form.
Once you reach that point,
you can then try extending the rest time.
And when using this training technique,
you generally wanna start with the hardest progression
that you actually can achieve.
You would then move on to an easier progression,
the regression of that exercise.
Then you would continue the same training method
working with the regression,
doing one every minute on the minute
for at least 15 minutes.
Using this very technique is the same way
that I learned how to master my L-sit
as well as all other advanced exercises
like the full planche, 90 degree pushups, and so much more.
So I'm gonna show you all the progressions
starting from the easiest to the hardest.
Find which one challenges you the most
and that's where you wanna start your training.
Doing that one every minute on the minute
and then regressing your way down.
And before you know it,
you've already developed the strength
and mastered the L-sit.
The very first progression we're gonna start off with
is gonna be a tucked L-sit.
And when doing all these progressions,
it's actually gonna help if you
do them on an elevated surface.
That's gonna give you space for your legs,
making this exercise easier if you can't yet
hold your body as high as you should.
And, of course, the more you do this,
you're gonna start to improve your core strength,
shoulder strength, hip flexor strength,
and hamstring flexibility.
So let's go ahead and get two elevated surfaces.
All right, so I'm gonna be using
these two elevated surfaces.
One elevated surface will still work,
but it's gonna be easier
and you're gonna have more space for your legs
if you use two elevated surfaces.
So we're gonna get right into this tucked L-sit.
You're gonna have a hand on each surface.
You're gonna depress your shoulders down
and start lifting your knees up.
When doing this exercise,
you wanna keep a conscious effort
to have your arms locked out,
but pressing down with your palms
and depressing your shoulders,
while maintaining core engagement
and trying to keep your knees raised.
All right, so there we have the tucked L-sit hold.
When you're just starting off,
try to hold this position for at least five seconds.
But you definitely wanna increase the duration of time.
Once you can do it for five seconds, do it for 10.
Eventually, you wanna hold this move for as long as you can,
every minute on the minute.
Eventually, you're gonna reach 30 second hold.
And once you're able to achieve a 20 to 30 second hold,
you're ready to move onto the next progression.
Of course, if you can already do that,
you're already ready for the next progression.
And the next progression we're gonna get into
is gonna be L-sit kicks.
We're gonna get into the same position
of a tucked L-sit hold,
but this time we're gonna kick our legs out.
At the beginning when you're
just starting off this exercise,
just extend your legs as far as you can.
The more you training this,
over time you're gonna be able
to put your legs out more further,
eventually fully extending your legs.
And one of they keys to acquiring the L-sit faster
is to prolong the time that you're actually
holding that L-sit position for.
Eventually, every time you kick out,
you're holding that L-sit position even longer.
All right, so there we have the L-sit kicks.
So at the beginning when just starting this move,
you can start off with five repetitions
every minute on the minute.
But before moving onto the next progression,
you wanna work your way up to eventually being able to do
at least 10 in a row or for 20 seconds straight.
So remember, if you cannot yet complete those requirements,
then this is exactly where you want to start.
Doing a set of these every minute on the minute
for 15 minutes straight,
and then doing the same thing for the tucked L-sit hold.
And if you continue to do this,
you're gonna be ready for the next progression.
If you can already do the L-sit kicks,
then you're already ready for the next progression
which is gonna be alternating single leg hold.
So, first, let me show you what that looks like.
Every single one of these progressions
stem off the tucked L-sit position.
So you're gonna bring one leg out,
and you're gonna bring the other one and alternate.
(upbeat music)
All right, so there we have
the single leg alternating L-sit.
And as you can see,
with this exercise we're extending one leg,
solidifying that L-sit position.
Strengthening each side individually,
but without carrying the weight of
both legs out in front of you.
But doing this will eventually translate
into being able to hold both of your legs out.
And the way we do that is in the way
that we start switching our legs.
At the beginning when you're doing this,
you can go ahead and switch them relatively fast.
But the goal is actually to slow down alternating your legs,
eventually holding each one longer and longer.
And as you can see, with the last couple reps that I did,
you'll be able to put them both out for a second.
Holding the L-sit and then bringing them back in.
So again, you wanna do this every minute on the minute
for at least six reps in total, three on each side.
And to complete the requirement of this progression,
you'll wanna be able to do it for at least 20 seconds.
And by the time you can do that,
you should actually be able to L-sit hold.
I'm gonna give you guys one last progression,
this one's gonna be done on the floor.
And with this progression,
you're actually gonna hold an L-sit position
for a short amount of time.
We're gonna be doing L-sit walks
and these are done on the ground.
So doing this progression,
we're gonna start seated on the floor
with our toes pointed forward and our legs locked out.
We're gonna press down on our shoulders,
engaging our core and our hip flexors,
maintaining this position
and moving our body forward.
(upbeat music)
So as you can see,
you wanna start slowing down that movement.
You can also try this going backwards as well.
(upbeat music)
And there we have L-sit walks.
Again, the whole point of this progression
is to slow down this movement.
Increasing how long you're holding the L-sit
every single rep.
So start off doing a couple of these
every single minute on the minute.
Once you can't do any more or you start breaking your form,
after 15 minutes, you wanna move back down
and start working every minute on the minute
with the L-sit kicks.
Working your way down and then doing the same thing
with the alternating single leg L-sit,
and then continuing doing that routine until you work
your way all the way back down to the tucked L-sit hold.
And training like this and doing it this way
will strengthen every single aspect of your L-sit hold.
And by the time you've trained all this
and accomplished all these progressions,
you should definitely be able to do an L-sit hold.
When first attempting an L-sit hold,
it's gonna be easiest on an elevated surface.
It's gonna give more room for your legs.
(upbeat music)
And then once you've been doing it there for a time,
again, every minute on the minute.
You can eventually bring it back down to the ground.
(upbeat music)
And there you have it.
That's exactly how you do an L-sit
from the very beginning.
Hopefully, I've been able to answer
the question of why you can't do it
or why you're still struggling to do it.
And, of course, the benefits of why
you want to be doing this.
Hopefully, I've helped the people that say they can't do it
to stop making excuses and to start training now.
And, of course, if you're already struggling with it,
you can choose the right progression
and start training for it right away.
And that's gonna conclude today's video.
Thank you guys so much much for watching.
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says they've been training in the gym for years
and still can't L-sit.
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Here's a preview of what it sounds like.
♪ Tell me when it went wrong ♪
♪ When you thought I was nothing ♪
♪ I couldn't wait to prove you wrong ♪
♪ Now I'm already stuntin' ♪
♪ I had no one to put me on ♪
♪ I had to cover the budget ♪
♪ And now you wanna get along ♪
♪ 'Cause they all wanna touch it ♪
♪ And now you know that I'm the one ♪
♪ It ain't no question or nothing ♪
♪ You know the fuck that I be on ♪
♪ Turning nothing to something ♪
♪ I hit the gas and I'm gone ♪
♪ Ain't got no time for discussions ♪
♪ I hit the gas and I'm gone ♪
♪ I ain't got no time for discussions ♪
♪ 'Cause I ain't tryna play those games with you ♪
♪ Shit ain't been the same since I laid with you ♪
♪ I ain't tryna trip every day around you ♪
♪ Said I ain't tryna play those games with you ♪
♪ Shit ain't been the same since I laid with you ♪
♪ I ain't tryna trip every time around you ♪
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