dragon flag alone?

Hi guys,

So I talked to this guy at my local park, he is pretty damn strong.. He can do front levers, OAP, and even an iron cross (I was like da f*** when I saw him do it). 

I asked him about how he worked his core, and he told me that the ONLY exercice he does is the dragon flag, ever since he started. He doesn't do any V-ups, hills or other exercices. All he does is dragon flags, and variations of them such as adding ankle weights, doing it inclined, inclined with weights, etc. 

Now he might be just blessed with genetics or something, so I was wondering, is the dragon flag really all you need in terms of core strength? Or will you be lacking if you don't work the other core exercices?

Thanks

Absolutely not. Dragon flag is relatively easy first of all, which is fixed by some variations, but the core needs to do more than stay stiff. It needs to be strong in bending, twisting, etc.

Dragon Flag (Body Levers) will prepare you for Front Lever. That is all. Straddle Planche, Side Lever, Manna, Single Leg Squat, Hollow Back Press, Rope Climbing and Freestanding Handstand all require their own preparatory exercises.

They're an excellent exercise and done for high reps, added weight etc will certainly bring your core up to FL standard.

They're not the *best* exercise; for example they have no compression factor and won't bring you close to the whole v-sit/manna side of things without a fair bit of supplementary work.

Around here we prefer to move to a more complex / harder variant by dropping the leverage rather than depend on weights

Thank you for your feedback, 

Seems to work pretty well on him, but I'd still go with harder different exercices like you suggested, it'll prolly build more strength

Abdominals have several functions: breathing, protecting the organs, stabilizing the body, curling forward and twisting if you include the obliques. Dragon flags are a very powerful exercise for the stabilizing aspect. And that will have carry over to dynamic core work but you still have to train the dynamic movement aspects. You're comparing an isometric exercise to a dynamic one. Both will make you strong, but trained together will make you MUCH stronger.

Not to forget the usefulness of training body levers as a static hold too-- at the 45 degree angle, it'll quickly point out issues in your line

Jon Douglas said:

Not to forget the usefulness of training body levers as a static hold too-- at the 45 degree angle, it'll quickly point out issues in your line

Why 45 degrees? Why not 0-10 degrees? 

B1214N said:

Why 45 degrees? Why not 0-10 degrees? 

WHY NOT INDEED.