One arm elbow lever (OAEL)

[Rajesh Bhat]

Hey guys! My son wants to spend a little time (~10 min. a day) to develop the OAEL for fun. He was wondering what progressions to use, he can already do a normal elbow lever and is training F1 and H1 alongside.

[Jon Douglas]

Aside from a good wrist warmup, shouldn't be any problem besides balance

[Rajesh Bhat]

Well yes, but I am wondering what progressions he should use

[Jason Dupree]

I always have the fingers 90 degrees to the side on croco. If you lift your chest and legs properly you do not really need to balance much in the axis of your head and legs. With the palm at 90 degrees you have good finger control sideways and its (at least for me) softer on the wrist than slightly forwards.

 

Also, if you would do advanced moves, like going up or down from it, you would need to have the palm this way. Even just for the versions where the elbow rests on the outside of the hip bone(queda de rins types) it would be very uncomfortable to have the wrist forwards

 

Only reason people have a hard time learning this one is because they try to do it with good form from the beginning. If you extend your legs and try to lift in the beginning you will have a much harder time learning to balance. Let it look like crap with bent legs for some weeks and it will progress fast. This is a move where it is very easy to correct the form regardless of how you have learned it, unlike a handstand.

 

Best way is to start with 1 elbow stabed in the hip, the other hand supporting at head/shoulder height, AND head on the floor. With legs on the floor, start to lean forwards into the elbow. At the same time, slide the legs on the floor towards you to bring all your weight towards your COM until your legs start to lift off. Curling the legs in to find balance is fine. Become solid  on each stage before moving on.

Then learn to lift the head and chest, legs still curled and hips dropped. Then extending the hips and straddling the legs while lifting the chest even more to center the weight. When this is comfortable, the support arm can move onto fingertips and gradually be removed when it isnt neccesary anymore. From there you can gather your legs, play around with the free arm, or learn variations.

I'd use the search function to look up crocodile/crokodile. There's some good stuff that may not show up when searching one arm elbow lever. They are the same thing.

[Rajesh Bhat]

Thanks!