hey everyone daniel vadinal here for fitness faqs with my fellow physiotherapy colleague simon
he's going to teach us how to human flag simon technique wise what should we be doing let's get
into it so today we're focusing on the horizontal flag so the isometric hold there's a lot more that
can be done with the flag you can do the flag essentially through a 360 degree range of motion
today we're focusing on the isometric you can do the flag on a horizontal
on two horizontal bars as we're going to do it today or on a vertical pole generally i find it
easier to learn on horizontal bars because with this grip you can balance yourself side to side
okay so it puts your hands in a little bit more of a comfortable position than you would be on a
on a vertical pole makes sense yep so we'll start with the hands and we'll move through
all the joints and talk about the technique so you can do the flag with the hands at varying widths
you can do it quite wide you can do it quite close um but quite close is very challenging
to do so i generally recommend you want to choose a grip that is wide and comfortable
without your head touching the the pole so this would be too wide that might be a good
a good width to do the flag at so you want to give give that a shot
sure why not so if i was doing it here as you were saying that's probably a bit too narrow
yep too extreme and that looks pretty good you've got some distance between
your head and the pole when we do this on the stall bars or the two horizontal bars
you're going to have your hands together like this and make them wide so both palms face
each other to hold the body in the horizontal position you want to be pushing with one arm and
pulling with the other arm so this is quite unique in that every other calisthenics skill the planche
the muscle up the front lever the back lever you're doing the same action with both hands
the flag is quite unique in that you need to coordinate a pulling movement with the
top arm and a pushing movement with the bottom arm to hold yourself horizontal
can you show me on this setup here yeah absolutely so to hold the body in a horizontal position
you're going to pull with the top arm or generate an adduction force so trying to
pull the arm down to your side with the bottom arm we want to abduct or push the arm out to the side
to hold the body in a horizontal position so the way i recommend you do that
for the flag is keep your arms straight elbows should be straight pull the top arm as short as
possible push the bottom arm as tall as possible in an attempt to lift your feet off the floor
okay perfect yep moving um moving down the chain so we've spoken about hand position
we've spoken about the elbows both arms straight and we've spoken about what to do with the arms
with the shoulder blades to make the shoulder blades conform to the correct position
you want to just pull the top arm as short as possible or try and make the top arm short
push the bottom arm tall okay that will naturally happen as you're doing
the abduction force with the bottom arm and the adduction force with the top arm
head should be in a neutral position body should be sideways like a flag makes sense yeah so you
can sometimes turn your body to face the ceiling or turn your body to face the floor that will
naturally happen with the inverted and upright positions to keep your shoulders in a nice healthy
comfortable position but when we're horizontal we want the body to be sideways to resemble a flag
we want the body to be in a straight line another common mistake that's often not picked up as much
is arching the back okay so even though you can keep a horizontal position like this we want
everything to be in a straight line like this flip 90 degrees to hold hold the body up it's
not only an abduction force from the bottom arm so all the pushing muscles the planche muscles that
we're using and adduction force from the top arm so the pulling muscles the same muscles that we
use in a pull-up but it's also the lateral core so it's the ql it's your glute mead holding your top
leg up and it's your adductors holding the bottom leg up so if you say someone that is straight arm
straight arm but they're having a lateral flexion is that a sign that they're maybe missing that
core component yeah so that can be two things that can be them trying to reduce the lever arm because
their arms aren't strong enough so sometimes you can arch your back in the in the back lever
because you don't actually have the shoulder strength um or it could just be an isolated
impairment in their lateral core so they could address that with some lateral core exercises
things like side leg raises things like the flag plank which i'll be taking through today perfect
all right so the first exercise we're gonna do is the 45 degree flag so this is a flag at a reduced
intensity because you're not horizontal you're on a 45 degree angle so to do this we're going
to start with the top arm on the horizontal bar about arms length from the vertical beam
so this will help you learn to push and pull simultaneously so dan's hanging there what
he's going to do is pull this arm as short as possible so a combination of retraction and
depression of this shoulder and he's going to push this arm as tall as possible or as long as
possible to put his body on a 45 degree angle so here dan's in a straight line from his head all
the way to his toes both arms are straight and he's trying to push and pull as much as
possible challenging can feel it especially when you're as you said trying to do that end range
uh pull with the top arm and push with the bottom arm yeah um so we want to get to a 45 degree angle
if this is too challenging you can do this as a dynamic exercise just lifting out to the side
and lowering back down as you build strength hold the position at the top for a couple of seconds
until you can maintain holds of about 10 to 20 seconds 15 seconds is a nice sweet spot between
those how do people find their perfect setup with the hand placement yep so if you move too far away
from the vertical beam you're going to be biasing the top arm so the top arm is going to do pretty
much everything so we'll make it a very extreme example of that if you want to put your top arm
quite far away oh yeah let's do this right here all right why not
bottom um essentially can't do anything yeah yep so you're doing everything there with the top arm
if you come too close to the bar you're going to be doing
more work with the bottom arm so that bottom arm really has to push to get you on a 45 degree
angle yep what you want to do in the flag is distribute the work evenly between both arms
so it takes a little bit of trial and error you want to find the sweet spot where you feel
like your top arm is working just as much as your bottom arm all right simon i'm feeling pretty good
with that 45 degree flag what do you recommend otherwise so next we're going to do the flag plank
so these two exercises are interchangeable it doesn't really matter which one you do first
because the flag plank can be scaled up or down to be really challenging or actually quite easy
it's analogous to the planche lean or the pseudo planche you can do a pseudo planche which is as
easy as a push-up or you can make it harder than a straddle planche so it's very similar with this
so this is going to give you a feel of what the flag is like with your feet on the ground now if
you generate enough force with this exercise your feet are actually going to lift off the ground so
to show you what it looks like i really like to set up at the edge of the stall bars so you can
be confident that your top arm is directly above your bottom arm it sounds it sounds simple but
quite often you'll miss that when you're trying it in the middle of store bar so that's a really
good cue to help find the right position so from here you want to sit in a flag position with your
feet on the floor pushing with the bottom arm pulling with the top arm and with enough force
you'll lift into a flag so what you want to intend with this exercise is being as light as possible
on the feet unfortunately it's not very objective it's difficult to measure without scales under
your feet so approach it with intensity to try to lift up you can even try to kick off a little bit
off the ground so we're going to do holds of 10 to 20 seconds again 15 seconds is a sweet spot ready
to give it a shot sure why not so as per simon's expert guidance this uh right flush with the rack
so pushing pulling yep hips down a tiny bit oh yeah you're off the ground there
you go there's a flag yeah so you're gonna do that with as much intensity as possible
for about 15 seconds all right and once again i really encourage you to film this because often
the position you think you're in and the position you're actually in a different your hips might be
a little bit high they might be a little bit too low filming it you get feedback to get that nice
perfect straight line one extra point i'll add this can be a bit of an uncomfortable position
if your feet are too low if your body is angled too much of an angle as opposed to horizontal
so one extra thing you can do to make this better mimic the flag
is elevate your feet on something like yoga blocks or a bench to put the body in a horizontal
position all right so do you want to do the flag plank position without the bench first
great so bring your feet forward slightly perfect so he's pushing and pulling and
as you can see dan's on an angle so if we pop dan's bottom foot on the bench
perfect he's going to push and pull keep his body sideways as opposed to pointing
towards the ceiling or the ground and try and be as light on the feet as possible
great now as a as a variation of this exercise you can do it with the legs straddled so instead of
placing your foot up on a bench you can straddle your legs it will reduce the intensity of the arms
a little bit but it will add a little bit more of a balance component to stop the body tipping from
side to side this also allows you to get a feel of the straddle flag which is a regression to
the full flag so you'll be doing that first as you approach the full flag in the unsupported position
perfect so what straddling the legs is going to do it's going to increase
the demand on the hip abductors and it's also going to add a
little bit of a balance component so there dan's doing it dynamically
perfect all right so this exercise is the kick to flag so we're going to be kicking to the flag
position and trying to control the descent against gravity back to the upright position
repeating that process as you get stronger you can hold the flag position momentarily
one to two seconds before controlling the descent you can do this in the straddle position to reduce
the intensity or in the full position to increase the intensity perfect so you're going to start
with your foot on the bench feet on the bench and you're going to be gripping both poles in the flag
position great you want to start this facing your hands and the reason for that is it's going to put
your shoulders in a much more comfortable position so if you face me dan's shoulders are in very
natural positions if he rotates his body 90 degrees to the sideways flag
when his body's upright it's not a very good position for his shoulders this arm's extremely
rotated externally rotated the other arm is very abducted over the top okay so you can kind of hang
on your joints there without much strength but it's quite a compromising position if you have any
sort of shoulder pathology or injury it's going to be um not a good day yes so you're going to start
facing the bars you're going to change your the plane of your body to that sideways position
as you kick to horizontal and you're going to try to control the descent to start with
let's just get to the flag and come down use a straddle position for a reduced
intensity that's it and come down so that was a lot of strength feel free to use momentum use
your legs a little bit more just to get to that position to get a feel of it great and come down
great perfect yeah so you can even use less strength than that kick up get to the position
come down as you become more familiar with the movement with the exercise try to use your arms
a little bit more to hold that flag and control the descent at a slower pace against gravity so
as you said playing around with different things like straddle then you can go to the full position
to pull out reducing momentum adding an isometric pause and just dominating the eccentric different
ways to progress exactly yep and as you control that eccentric remember to change the plane of
your body from sideways to facing the bars so your shoulders stay in nice natural positions perfect
that sounds good great okay so the last exercise we're doing before we're doing the full flag
is the band assisted flag so we've built some strength and control with the previous exercises
we've become familiar with this unique motor pattern of pushing and pulling with one arm
now we get to do the flag in an assisted manner with assistance from a band
i really like using bands for assistance because they provide an objective consistent amount of
assistance each time you do it much better than a spot where you might give me a little
bit more help one session on a little bit less the next session so the way we set up for this
is with a band anchored overhead it's much easier on store bars you don't have to anchor it so high
today we're going to make use of what we've got so a band anchored overhead once again i like to use
the edge of the store bar so you know everything is stacked directly on top of each other
your hands and the band are in the same plane go for a sign pull the band down
we're gonna put one foot in the band and ensure that this foot is on the outside of
your hand so you don't get tangled yep from here i slowly lift this leg up to a straddle position
and the band is going to assist me to the straddle flag when i'm comfortable holding
the straddle flag reduce the intensity of the band until you can hold it without assistance
then you can bring your feet together and do the same thing awesome
great thank you you want to give it a shot sure all right
so
great straighten that leg to try and make this look
as effortless as simon i doubt it but here we go
there we go great you bring your hips up a little bit oh am i doing it assisted flag
you can obviously reduce the thickness of the band to reduce how much assistance you receive
as you progress toward the full flag you can do the straddle flag unassisted and then
use the same process to work toward the full flag unassisted with bands i really like that because
it's teaching everything the pull the push the body position and it's at a reduced intensity
where i can actually get something out of it if i tried to do that unassisted i probably wouldn't be
able to hold it for the time that you recommend so this is great for me and other beginners too yeah
allows you to become familiar with the flag spend some time in that position rather than trying one
or two second holds and burning out after a couple of sets now the flag is a bit unique
because you can't progress in the same manner that you do for the front lever the back
lever of the planche by just extending the lever arm with tark advanced tuck
single leg or straddle and full and the reason for that is in the flag if i come around this side
in the flag we want the body to be sideways like so sticking out from the bars if i tuck the legs
this changes the the plane that my body's in and adds a rotational force this way that i
have to control which can be quite awkward to combat that you either need to turn your body
to face the ceiling which isn't quite like this horizontal flag that we're training
so for that reason i tend to progress with the exercises that i've shown you
and use the straddle you can also use the diamond shape to reduce that lever arm a little bit more
and the full position as the final progression perfect i could see how that would make it a
completely different exercise and the regressions and other techniques will be more than good enough
for everyone yep there's obviously a lot more you can do with the flag so you can do razors up and
down you can do human flag pull-ups and push-ups you can do 360 flags but using the exercises that
we've gone through today provides an effective method to unlock the isometric horizontal flag
so programming for the human flag is quite unique because you've got both pushing and pulling
components so it's difficult to incorporate this into a push-pull split one simple effective method
is to perform three flag sessions per week with 48 hours between sessions for muscle recovery
do these four exercises on each side for three sets and for the dynamic exercises perform
between 5 and 10 repetitions for the static holds between 10 and 20 second holds start with your
most challenging exercises regress to the easier ones all right everyone that's the complete human
flag tutorial featuring sai monster go ahead and check out his stuff absolute legend in the
calisthenics game simon as always man thanks for coming thanks for having me see you soon