Planche, Why Lean so much?

Hey guys I've been looking a lot more at the planche and noticed that everyone leans so far forward...

This was never the case when I was around 8-9 years old. The angle was slight but much closer to 90 degrees. Perhaps being only 50 lb's at the time would help tremendously.

So just curious as to why and how one becomes strong enough to decrease the lean?

I would venture to say the lean is about balancing body-weight, so if your lower body is heavier than more lean is necessary.

I could be wrong though.

The longer your torso is in relation to your arms, the more lean is required to get the hands at waist level.  If your arms are longer then you have less lean...

...or that makes sense in my head anyway

Yeah, the lean is rather a matter of physics than a matter of strength.

My hands were just slightly behind my shoulder... Never even close to my waist.

I try to think of the planch as a see saw or a scale (it's even called scale in the code of points). The middle of your body ( around the belly botton) will be the middle part of the scale/see saw. You will want to lean over until your hands are at this point. Another words distribute your body weight equally on both sides of the middle point.

Somalie said:

My hands were just slightly behind my shoulder... Never even close to my waist.

Somalie said:

My hands were just slightly behind my shoulder... Never even close to my waist.

Sounds like you have a bad memory, or defy physics--perhaps you could show a picture of someone doing a planche in which you believe has the "correct" lean.

My memory is in fact quite good... I don't know what physics are present during a planche. I simply attribute it to being so small for my age. Perhaps just a mechanical advantage at the time.

We were all much stronger when were young. But that was well before the weight of the world rested squarely upon your shoulders.

Well, it would depend entirely on where your center of mass is, because it has to be inside the base created by your hands, and that changes when you alter the position/shape of your body.

If you were in a very wide straddle, or a tuck or something, as a child your center of mass would probably have been somewhere near the bottom of your sternum, which is pretty high up.  Keep in mind that children have small limgs and large heads, proportionally, so the whole-body center of mass is going to be much closer to the shoulders than it will be as a teenager or adult. The younger the child, the more prominent this effect.

Add that to protraction and depression, and there's no reason why you couldn't see something like 60-70 degrees (and maybe more) of shoulder flexion in a small child. That's very close to 90.

Somalie said:

(...) that was well before the weight of the world rested squarely upon your shoulders.

LOL... with the "weight of the world" on your shoulders, you should not have to lean very much, eh?

If anyone can provide me a video or a picture of a close to 90 degree planche I would be very happy.