Back Lever Critique

Here are some back lever attempts:

Back lever has been a skill that I did not actively train for unlike the planche. I haven't even trained it since October. I didn't even go through the usual progressions:

(German hang -> tucked-> advanced tucked -> straddle -> half lay -> full lay).

As soon as I was able to do a full lay planche, I was able to do a full lay back lever, so apparently planche carries over to the back lever. It's not perfect, but it's a back lever nonetheless. Anyway, I'm having trouble determining the correct body alignment (which is kind of ironic because I can easily tell whether I'm straight or arched in my planche). How can I feel if my feet are too high up or if I'm arching too much and retracting or protracting my shoulders?

Btw I'm using supinated grip so I can engage my biceps more and also for future pelican training

Edit: Now that I think about it, I don't think I was tensing my abs enough because it's hard trying to concentrate on breathing and straightening my back at the same time lol.

Not bad. You can look under your body with your head to see if you are level or not or just have a spotter tell you and memorize the feeling. I always know if I arch or not because of that specific feeling of arching. You should maybe contract your abs to flatten your lower back and always stop when you begin to arch since it's easy to develop that bad habit. 

Planche and back lever have a lot of carryover between the two since they use many of the same muscles and are both shoulder flexion. Do you still have your full front lever, because it should be even easier to do a back lever when you have both a planche and FL since the BL uses a lot of the lats too like the FL.

B1214N said:

...Planche and back lever have a lot of carryover between the two since they use many of the same muscles and are both shoulder flexion. 

Just looking at old posts here and quotes and interviews w/ Coach Sommers on other sites and found this from Coach (sorry, lost link)

 

 

For beginning ring strength development, I recommend focusing on only three elements; support holds , front levers, and back levers. 

No planche there... Curious which way to go.  Just starting into trying to build basics for gymnastics development.  Also found old post on DragonDoor (COMRADES)(HAH!) and got the impression that just working planche and front lever plus general conditioning and mobility would be best upper body foundation.  Nope, don't have book (yet--$ issues)