I was “playing” at the park yesterday with my friend. Great to always have a camera on hand.
Here I was able to hold my first back lever with legs straight but also together.
Check off one major goal for this year!
Compare this to my earlier straddle back levers.
The crazy thing is I haven’t even been working on this skill lately. I have been working towards one arm pullups and a number of exercises with the Power Wheel to strength the abs. I guess those two things are carrying over. I also noticed I was better at various front lever progressions we worked on.
I also think that it may have been a little easier on these monkey bars, over the rings that I’ve normally done them on. But then I did another back lever, possibly even better then this one, on some rings they had there a little later. Sorry, no video of this one but I will have lots more from the park in coming weeks and months.
Filed under Exercises, Gymnastic Rings, Levers, Strength, Videos by on Feb 15th, 2012. 3 Comments. 
I received the following question from Gary regarding moving from the tuck to advanced tuck planche.
Thanks for all your good advice and tutorials.
Can you help me as I am trying at the moment to go from tuck planche to advanced tuck planche, (sure you have had this question a few times.) I am really struggling with any progress and wondered if there was any tips you knew that may help me along.
This video here describes tips on how to this step of planche training.
The tuck planche involves straight arms and holding your body aloft.
The next step involves making it one step closer to the advanced tuck planche. I originally learned of this as one step in planche progressions from Coach Sommer in this article here. Check it out for more ideas. This includes:
1. Bringing your Shoulders Forward
Bringing your shoulders forward places additional stress on them as the leveraged position is harder to hold. As you progress in teh various planche moves you’re moving more and more forward, requiring more and more strength.
2. Straighten the Back
This one is closely tied into the next one. In fact all three of these are tied together. Straightening the back tends to make you need to raise the hips and move the shoulders forward. A back that is straight (even arched a little) and parallel to the floor is the position you’ll be holding for all future planche progressions.
3. Raise the Hips
The hips should be raised up to shoulder level. In the regular tuck planche the hips are low but this is the main point in moving to the advanced tuck planche. As you raise the hips its natural for the legs to start to untuck. When starting out make sure to keep them tucked but as you improve levering them out is the next step.
I didn’t make it completely clear in the video. Think of these three areas as places you can focus on and start the movement from, but recognize that they are all related.
The planche is a truly difficult move and will take a long time to master. With these moves be content to add a second here, or a slightly better position there. Small improvements over time lead to amazing moves.
For much more on planching as well as all forms of hand balancing consult the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
Filed under Exercises, Hand Balancing Tips, Planche, Strength, Videos by on Jan 24th, 2012. 3 Comments.
Here’s another video of an amazing hand balancer.
- The video starts off with 15 straddle L presses to handstand.
- This is followed by 10 handstand pushups, a half pirouette, then 3 more.
- Using rotating hand balancing stands a series of elbow lever press to handstands.
- Front and side splits (including extended).
- One arm handstands in a variety of positions on the floor and on stands.
- This is followed by one arm presses and hopping from hand to hand.
- I don’t think I’ve ever seen the move at the 5:30 mark before (it has to be way harder then the straddle version)
- A variety of walking, holds, human flag, the grand arch and much more.
- And it ends with one of the most visually appealing hand balancing stunts.
Hand balancing is not a lost art to this individual. Thanks to Mark for sending me this video.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
Here’s a new video that gives you another tip on training the bent arm pressing, specifically the frogstand press, though this applies to them all.
This involves using static holds to build strength and control your press. You must have the strength to hold each portion of the handstand press to really control the movement. This will aid in your ability to smoothly get up to the handstand.
You can find out much more about bent arm pressing in the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
Filed under Exercises, Hand Balancing Tips, Handstand Presses, Strength, Videos by on Jan 10th, 2012. Comment.
Here’s a new video that gives you a tip on training the bent arm pressing, specifically the bent arm straddle press is shown. Of course this would work equally well with any other press.
You can find out much more about bent arm pressing in the Hand Balancing Mastery Course.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
Filed under Exercises, Hand Balancing Tips, Handstand Presses, Strength, Videos by on Jan 3rd, 2012. Comment.
Have you ever wanted to do the Human Flag?
Then today is your lucky day. My friend, Thomas Tapp, and his brother have just put together a detailed course, on how to achieve this one amazing move.
I’ve been working on the flag on and off over the past year, seeing some success. But after watching their videos last night, I’ve learned new progressions and tricks to use to make this even easier. And I’m excited to work on it more.
Click here for a video that will get you started and to order the course for less than $20.
Filed under Acrobatic Feats, Exercises, Strength, Videos by on Oct 7th, 2011. Comment.
You can spend a lot of time on Youtube looking around at videos on many cool things. Parkour and Free running are two such things.
But instead of you looking I’ll highlight a few of the best in the coming weeks here on the blog. This first one is long but has tons of great tricks as it s a compilation of the best.
You’ll find all kinds of acrobatics as well as a little bit of hand balancing and strength moves, like the human flag, thrown in.
And if you want to get started learning Parkour and many of these skills yourself I recommend you check out the Parkour Crash Course.
This is put out by the Tapp Brothers of which I recommended their Backflip program and it was hugely popular.
Good Luck and Good Free Running,
Logan Christopher
P.S. If you know of any great videos I should check out either enter them in the comments below or shoot me an email. Thanks!
Filed under Acrobatic Feats, Exercises, Parkour, Strength, Tumbling, Videos by on Aug 22nd, 2011. Comment.
The more strength you have the better you’ll be in hand balancing and acrobatics.
You may be saying ‘DUH’ but this works on multiple levels.
Obviously you’ll require more strength in order to do high strength movements like the planche, iron cross and more.
Among various moves some are more strength oriented like those above and others are more skill oriented like the handstand and more so the one arm handstand.
Still all require some degree of both strength and skill.
Yes you need strength in order to do a handstand. Its not much if you get into a proper body position but it is still present. And if you hold a handstand for a minute or two you’ll start to feel those muscles burning.
Even though it doesn’t require much strength, practicing the skills can take strength and endurance.
Lets say you’re working on the one arm handstand. Maybe you get ten minutes of practice in before your shoulders are fatigued and you can’t get any more quality work in.
Let’s say you’re trying to do a bent arm press. It takes strength plus skill. If your strength is lacking how good are you going to get at the skill of that movement?
Freestanding handstand pushups? Going to be very hard to work the balance of the movement if two handstand pushups against the wall is all you can manage.
So more strength makes doing the moves easier but also allows you to get more quality practice in. If you’re fatigued then its hard to do fine motor movements.
That’s why building a foundation of strength is important. And when you’re just focusing on this foundational strength you want to minimize the skill necessary.
I have a video that talks more about this and the four bodyweight exercises that work best for the whole body.
All you have to do is go here and signup to watch it immediately.
And soon I’ll have even more to help you get stronger and thus more skilled.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. If you’ve already signed up the next video on the Do’s and Don’ts of Technique is set to come out tomorrow. But if you haven’t go here now.
Filed under Exercises, Hand Balancing Tips, Handstand Presses, Handstand Pushups, Strength by on May 15th, 2011. 3 Comments.
Here is a great video I saw recently of an excellent hand balancer from France. It shows a wide variety of amazing hand balancing skills.
Hand balancing stands are used in about the first half of the video. Then a few other tools are used throughout as well. One of my favorites is jumping off of the table in a handstand. And it ends with some tumbling movements as well.
Just by studying this you can find something you can add into your routine, even if you’re not as advanced the basics of moving the body around while in a handstand is great for just about everybody.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Hand Balancing Stands are back in stock here. Get your pair while they’re still available.
Filed under Acrobatic Feats, Exercises, Hand Balancing Feats, Handstand Presses, Handstands, Strength, Videos by on Apr 25th, 2011. 1 Comment.
Ryan Hurst from Gold Medal Bodies is here to show you how to move forward with your parallette training. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2. This is the third in a three part series.
By now, you should have developed some foundation strength in the basic parallette press and L-sit. That’s a great start, but we started off this series talking about advanced exercises like planches, and maybe it still seems like we’re a long way off from there.
Though it’s true we’re still not ready for advanced work, we can prepare for it by taking these basic skills and combining them into a combination routine.
Anyone following Logan is not going to be a stranger to the concept of sophisticated skills such as handstands and bridging. You’ve also been exposes to the idea of building from simple variations to more difficult ones. One way we like to achieve this is by building combinations – what we like to call “flows” – that put the basic movements together in more interesting and challenging ways.
Today’s video covers a simple flow exercise you can do on the parallettes.
As you can see, we’ve added one more basic exercise, then put them together into a simple combination.
The routine goes like this:
1. Pushup
2. Swing forward to L-sit
3. Swing back to inverted press
4. Repeat
Perform this for 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 repetitions. Do this 3 days in a row, rest one day, then test your strength the next day to check your progress. We’ve included a sample two week program using this routine that will get you ready to begin serious parallette training – the kind that moves you toward advanced skills.
Download link for sample program
Of course, there’s much more to using parallettes than this. The possibilities are really almost endless, but you’ll need some basic strength and control before you can pull off the fancy stuff.
The program above is a starting point. Once you’ve given that a shot, we encourage you to check out our Parallettes One course, which takes these basics to the next level, building pressing strength and skill that will serve you well for any goal.
Gold Medal Bodies has a full blown course on Parallette Training. Until the end of March you can save 15% off the price of any P1 bundle by using the coupon code ‘LEGENDARY’.
Filed under Exercises, Hand Balancing Tips, Strength, Videos by on Mar 22nd, 2011. Comment.
