hi I'm Ryan from GMB Fitness today I'd like to share the back lever tutorial
with you
now there's quite a few different ways that you can work on the back lever but
over the years when I come back to work on the back lever I find myself
gravitating towards using these four positions and keeping it very simple so
if you've watched the front lever tutorial you'll see that it's pretty
much the same again keeping it simple and just being aware of each position
spending time in that position before jumping on to the next one with the back
lever there are two hand positions that we want to focus on when doing this I
suggest in the very beginning that you keep it relatively easy on the arms and
so the way to do that is by having the palms facing upwards this is gonna place
more focus on the shoulders rather than the elbows when you're working on the
back lever so in the beginning once again I suggest starting with the palms
facing upward when you're doing these progressions work through those work up
to maybe the straddle or even the full back lever before starting to work on
keeping your palms facing towards the ground with the palms facing towards the
ground you'll find they'll put more emphasis on the elbows and the biceps
and by first focusing on keeping the palms facing up you're gonna be working
on strengthening those positions before you start loading the arms with the
other hand placement so before we get into this tutorial I will say that the
first order of business is making sure that you're working on your skin the cat
the skin the cat is kind of going to be a prerequisite for what we're doing here
so if you've never done the skin the cat before I suggest spending diligent
time working on that making sure that you're opening up your shoulders and
you're comfortable with this position now with the skin the cat I will say
that one way to work on it rather than just letting your feet hang free is to
actually set up your rings or if you're using a bar use a bar that's
low enough that allows you to place your toes on
the ground so that you have control while you're in that skin the cat
position the first position that we're going to use for our back lever work is
the simple tuck now you want to stay tucked as tightly as possible and
there's two ways that you're gonna work on this in the very beginning you're
simply gonna go from an inverted hang and you're just gonna lower yourself
to that dead hang so this is very very similar to the skin the cat position
that you've been working on right so first work on that tight tuck slow lower
and when you're feeling very comfortable and then it's time to pause midway work
into about three to five second hold for that tuck position the next position is
where you're simply going to open up the Tuck a bit more now simple in theory yes
but remember that by opening up the Tuck it's going to be placing more load on
the body so focus on that slow negative focus on what's going on in your body in
the shoulders what's going on with your hand what are you feeling during the
movement this is very very important spend time working on that and when you
feel very comfortable then it's time to go ahead pause in the middle hold that
open tuck back lever position for about three to five seconds next up is the
straddle back lever a cool thing about the straddle is that you can adjust the
straddle so if you want to make it a little bit easier straddle wider
gradually you can work on taking your legs closer together as you perform that
negative and then once you're comfortable of course holding the middle
position for three to five seconds now you might find yourself piking if that's
the case then what I suggest is going back to that open tuck and focus on that
a bit more so when you're lowering from that straddle that's the focus you want
to have is to not pike your body so either straddle wider making sure you're
not piking or go back to spend more time on that open tuck position you're now
ready for the full back lever now this should be a natural progression
because after we're working with the straddle and slowly bringing your legs
closer together should just happen and so once again try not to Pike and I
mentioned this in the straddle portion of it but you might find yourself piking
if that's the case when you're performing the full front lever
simply open up your legs a little wider bring the focus to what's going on in
the body making sure that you're not piking so focus on that nice nice
position as you're lowering yourself in the negative portion and then focus on
holding that middle full back lever position for about three to five seconds
alright so that's it for the back lever now there's only four positions but the
cool thing is that there are a lot of little nuances within each of those
positions when you're working on the straddle you can adjust that depending
on how you're feeling that day you can straddle wider bring your legs closer
together as well that day let's say you're
working on that straddle the form starts to deteriorate so what you can do is
drop down to that open tuck continue to add in volume get in more quality
repetitions of the back lever while continuing to strengthen yourself also
remember once you're very comfortable with the first hand position feel free
to turn your hands over and work on that hand position that's going to completely
change the dynamic of the back lever I do suggest to start at the very
beginning if once again with the Tuck position when you start to do that new
hand position but be sure to check out the full article on the front and back
lever and leave a comment if you have a question as well
be sure to subscribe to our Channel