My Bl attempts/form check.

[Tavis G]

Does it look like my Back is flat and my activation good? I have never ever trained the back lever. Just trying it here and there.

BTW, i know that my straddled legs are a bit lower, but my butt was cramping trying to hold them up and apart.

LLOWPNFr8gs

[Joshua Naterman]

You really need to work on tuck and flat tuck first, you aren't strong enough to get much out of trying the more advanced positions. Your body position when you are tucked is pretty good, so you really need to get strong in that position and work up from there. You will probably have a solid 5+ second straddle by that goal date in November if you follow my recommendations here and don't try to push too hard. Do not shoot for a specific position, just work hard at what you can do right now.

Back lever tends to come more quickly than the other FSP but if I were you I would start working on

a) tuck and flat tuck BL holds for time.

b) lowering from invert into flat tuck BL and back to invert.

c) german hangs.

I'm not going to spell out the programming for you, since you clearly have your own ideas about what you want to do. I am just suggesting which positions and movements will help you the most. My suggestion for b is to go to failure and move slowly, especially on the way down. Do not rest in BL, try to keep constant movement. Slow means 3-5 seconds down and same time up with no bounce at the bottom.

[Tavis G]

Thanks slizz. But should i try to work on 60 seconds lile other fsp or just hold it for a shorter amount of time? I have b een greasing the grove with 1 leg in/ out for a couple days now i can hold a 1 second full back lever. I want to get a full bacever by school starts to impress people. When i get a solid BL(full) should i add ankle weights? BTW what are german hangs? My back is going to be sore tommorow.

[Daniel Burnham]

If you want to be successful and not have injuries you need to stop setting deadlines to impress people with and just focus on working on the strength necessary to do the skills.

That said you do need to fall back and work on the tuck and advanced tuck variations. I highly doubt you are able to hold a good full back lever for even a second when you can't hold the straddle for that long. Also even if you can you really shouldn't start working it until you can do about 5 seconds of that skill.

I would start a static strength cycle and work on getting the strength you need. Back lever is only the first of many skills and prepares you for the more advanced work. You don't need to worry about putting weights on your ankles for some time. And when you do get to that point there are more things to do than just increase the intensity of the back lever.

[Joshua Naterman]

Thanks slizz. But should i try to work on 60 seconds lile other fsp or just hold it for a shorter amount of time? I have b een greasing the grove with 1 leg in/ out for a couple days now i can hold a 1 second full back lever. I want to get a full bacever by school starts to impress people. When i get a solid BL(full) should i add ankle weights? BTW what are german hangs? My back is going to be sore tommorow.

I wish I could tell you how many times I hurt myself when I was young by doing stupid stuff to impress people, but I didn't keep count at the time.

I don't think you are holding anything, quite honestly, and you need to stop trying right now and just focus on what I said. If you want to do 1-2 straddle holds once per week to check progress on the last training day of the week then do that, but everything else should be higher reps to failure and for the FSP holds you need to build up to 60s. I would go to failure of good form 3 times and do that 3x per week. You can try 4x, but it may slow down progress this way.

German hangs are when you lower down from BL to a hang, trying to be vertical.