This video is going to be pretty math-heavy.
Since you asked for it, don't fall asleep or click away.
Let's have a quick review for people who haven't watched my previous video.
When you do the front lever, your center of mass has to be right below the bar, otherwise
your body will swing unless you have superhuman grip strength.
The key factor in how hard the front lever will be for you is the angle between your
torso and your arms.
The larger the angle is, the easier it is.
The smaller the angle is, the harder it is.
This is also why only a few individuals in the world can do a victorian.
If you still don't believe me, you can go find a lat pulldown machine yourself and see
how much weight you can pull with various angles in the front lever position.
I am sure you will find out how fast the weight you can pull will drop even with just a few
degrees of the reduction of the angle.
Everyone has a different body type and that's why the front lever is nearly impossible for
some people but achievable for other people.
We know that the front lever is easy for people who are short with long arms and jacked upper
body since these characteristics cause the angle to be big.
On the other hand, the front lever is difficult for people who are tall with short arms and
low hypertrophied upper body muscle mass since these characteristics cause the angle to be
small.
But what if you have mixed characteristics like myself, short with short arms and low
hypertrophied upper body muscles, how would you know if you belong to the nearly impossible
camp of the front lever or the achievable camp?
Fortunately, we all can do a DEXA scan and use the data to calculate the required angle
between our torso and arms.
It's an approximation, but a pretty good one.
The DEXA scan report provides the weight of your arms, legs, trunk, android, and gynoid
as well as your total weight.
Initially, I was very confused about these numbers because these 5 numbers added together
don't equal the total weight, and somehow the head is missing.
After talking to the DEXA scan guy, I was able to figure it out.
Android means abs.
Gynoid means hips.
The legs in the report actually include hips and legs, so we can get the real leg weight
by minus the hip weight.
Trunk means abs plus chest, so we can get the chest weight by trunk minus abs.
The head weight will be the total weight minus everything else.
Now we assume that the center of mass is in the very middle of these body segments.
I know the weights of these body segments aren't uniformly distributed, so they aren't
entirely accurate, but again, unless we have a more advanced body scan that breaks down
the body into more segments, this is the best approximation we can have.
The next thing you need to do is measure the length of each of your body segments.
You don't need anything fancy like a DEXA scan to do this.
You can literally measure this with a ruler by yourself.
Once you finish the measurements, you can start the math calculation.
The very basic idea is that the center of mass of your different body segments is the
geometric decomposition of the centroid of your entire body.
Let's assume the origin is in where the head is.
If we expand the summation in the numerator, we will have the length of the head divided
by 2, times the weight of the head, plus the length of the chest divided by 2, times the
weight of the chest.
It's the same idea for the abs, hips, and legs, so I am not going to repeat them.
As for the arms, it's the length of the head plus the centroid of the entire body
minus the length of the head divided by 2, times the weight of the arms.
The denominator is just your entire body weight.
Now, if you shuffle the unknown variable, which is the centroid of the entire body, to
the left side of the equation, you will be able to solve the centroid by simply plugging
in the numbers.
Once you have the centroid, the angle is simply the arc cosine of centroid minus the length
of head divided by the length of arms.
Just in case using variables is too abstract for you, here's a real number in action
with my personal data.
Now, the full front lever might be too difficult for you, and you want to see the angle for
the half lay.
The modification to the equation is that the first half of the leg now has a center of
mass of one fourth of the leg length, and the second half of the leg now has a center
of mass of half of the leg length.
The remaining derivation is exactly the same as the full front lever.
You might be also curious about the straddle, too.
The modification is simply the length of leg times the cosine of the straddle angle divided
by 2.
Here's a top-down view to show why exactly it's the cosine of the straddle angle just
in case you are confused.
The remaining derivation is exactly the same as the full front lever.
On a side note, this also settles the debate on which is easier, the straddle or the half
lay, as I've seen way too many different opinions on this.
The answer is that it depends on the straddle angle.
If you are flexible enough to have a straddle angle of, say, 60 degrees, then the straddle
is easier than the half lay for you.
If you aren't flexible and can have only a straddle angle of, say, 30 degrees, then
the half lay is easier than the straddle for you.
If you have moderate flexibility and your straddle angle is around 45 degrees, then
the difficulty of straddle and half lay are going to be similar for you.
As for the straddle half lay, we can simply modify the half lay equation by multiplying
a cosine of the straddle angle to the legs.
The remaining derivation is exactly the same.
As for the advanced tuck, it becomes head to hip length times half of the leg weight,
plus half of the leg length times the sine of your leg dangling angle divided by 2, times
half of the leg weight.
For the leg dangling angle, I set it arbitrarily to 30 degrees because that seems like the
most natural angle for most people.
Again, the remaining derivation is exactly the same.
Just for completeness, if I pour in my numbers, here will be the angles required for me to
do the front lever, and unfortunately, I belong to the nearly impossible camp for achieving
the front lever.
The angle needed to do the front lever for most calisthenics YouTubers are at a comfortable
52~55 degrees due to their jacked upper body muscle mass and longer arms.
You can try to calculate yours based on your own data and find a lat pulldown machine to
see how much you can pull at your required angle to determine which you belong to, the
achievable camp or the nearly impossible camp.
If you don't want to bother doing the math and you want to simply input your DEXA scan
numbers into a website and get your own personalized results, I can easily make it happen because
after all my core competence is software and math instead of climbing and calisthenics.
However, I want to see some support from you guys for my newest 5Bar venture.
You will not only get awesome healthy premium bars to eat but also support the channel
at the same time.
If I see enough support, I will be happy to spin up a website for free to the public,
and 5Bar customers will get early access to beta test it.
Lastly, I want to respond to a few comments from my last video.
No, core is not the issue.
I can do a full dragon flag without even training for it.
Additionally, core is rarely the issue for the front lever, and even YouTube experts
agree with me.
To all the "train hard, be strong, don't be not strong" people, maybe training itself
is fun for you, so you don't mind training blindly without understanding the math and
physics involved, but I am juggling too many things at the same time, so I would rather
understand things, train smart, pick my battle, and train effectively.
I also want to thank a viewer who reached out to me and showed me his 45-degree perfect
form of the front lever and gave me encouragement.
This is by far the most, "man, maybe I still can't give up yet," moment after I announced
that I inclined towards giving up on the front lever in my last video.
I also want to thank multiple insanely strong calisthenics athletes for reaching out.
They gave me some new training ideas that are different from the ideas from the coaches
I reached out prior to making my previous video, and are also different from the suggestions
YouTube experts give out.
I am not sure if I am allowed to reveal publicly here what they said, so I won't, but I am
quite surprised that there's still something new to try, and I plan to implement their
suggestions for a period of time and see how they will work out for me.
Thanks for watching.
As we all know, mainstream climbing brands refuse to sponsor average climbers like myself.
Therefore, I have no choice but to create my own brand to sponsor myself.
As you might've heard, I have recently launched my own healthy premium food bar called 5Bar.
Considering your feedback, I decided to get rid of the box and selling 6 bars per unit
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I take all of your feedback seriously, and I use them to make 5Bar even better and better.
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See you in the next video.