Elbow lever helpful for planche or back lever?

Hey, I was wondering if you think working on the Elbow Lever (http://beastskills.com/tutorials/tutorials/55) would have any carryover to planche or back lever work? It's definitely easier than the planche and probably easier than the back lever, but maybe it works the lower back and stuff in the same way?

I donno, maybe the fact that you're balancing on your elbows means it wont do much for the others. Just curious so let me know

No.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Very Laconic coach, are you sure you don't have a bit of Spartan in you? Madknight I'll elaborate as a TOTAL layman and not a coach whatsoever, but in my experience I have found that the body positioning for the elbow lever and the planche is totally different.

While both maneuvers require a decent amount of core strength, that is where the similarity ends. In a planche and a back lever (I think at least) your body should be more strictly in a dish shape, with the core keeping you solid, and the shoulders keeping you up. In an elbow lever, your shoulders are doing nothing, and you are using your back muscles to keep the legs upright which puts you more into an arch position. While this is definitely a pretty skill, I think that it is not using the right muscles for planche which means you will not be strengthening towards the skill, and further more, you will be reinforcing the wrong bodyshape mentally which will make the planche and back lever harder in the long run. I would focus more on good form plank holds and dish rocks to get the right core strength, and Coach's progressions, PPPushups and planche leans to build the necessary shoulder strength.

So while there's nothing wrong in learning both skills, I don't think that there is any caryover between them.

Haha Coach is straight and to the point.

Thanks for the elaboration Primate. I didn't expect there to be much, if any, carryover but I had just wondered if the core strength helped at all. I may still pick up this neat little skill at some point anyway, but it wont be a focus or anything. Just something I might play around with from time to time.

If you just want to work your back for the planche, simply do reverse hypers or something like that!