front lever – Flight Training Fitness

pull-up-grip-types

*Remember when we go upside down, an overhand grip will look underhand and vice versa.

Welcome! I’ve been wanting to start a blog for Flight Training, but have been sitting in the contemplation phase of creation, pondering what I would want to share. Well, grip position in moves like Lever (specifically for Aerialists) seemed like a good place to start. It has just the right balance of conflicting information and debate online, personal interest for myself and my clients, and the opportunity to geek out on movement mechanics. These moves (Front Lever and Back Lever), originate in Gymnastics, but have taken on lives of their own in the Calisthenics (bodyweight training), Street Workout, and Aerial Worlds.

Even the names of these moves morph across disciplines, causing confusion.

Front Lever

Back Lever

Planche

For instance, I call the positions in the first two images Levers (front and back, respectively), which seems to be the most used terminology in Calisthenics and Gymnastics. Yet, the Aerial world has adopted the term Planche for these positions. In Calisthenics and Gymnastics, a Planche is the third image, a move where your weight is supported on your hands on a surface or apparatus below you. The shape of the body in each is relatively similar until you look closely at the hands and shoulders. And in mechanical terms, all three are in fact levers. Want to nerd out on the physics of a Back Lever? Did you know that systems of levers enable all of your movement? Alright, back on topic, let’s talk about grip.

Let’s start with Front Lever, as it’s grip is less hotly contended. Front Lever is entered with an overhand (pronated) grip, or occasionally in the case of rings or parallel bars, a neutral grip (palm faced inwards). Two common entrances are to pull up into it from a dead hang, or to lower into it from a straight body inversion (Needle in Aerial terminology). The latter is definitely easier and is the generally prescribed entrance if you are still working on gaining the strength to hold your lever confidently, no matter what progression you are on. This variation also has an advantage in helping you to find the proper shoulder position (which I’m including because it’s intimately related to grip). In front lever, your shoulders are simultaneously trying to externally rotate, depress, and retract slightly. Here’s a quick anatomy summary if you need it.

Want more anatomy and physiology? Check out this book by the Circus Doc.

Now, let’s break that down. The best cues I’ve heard to achieve the advised slight external rotation, is to think about your hands trying to pull the bar apart or break it in half by bending the ends downward, or to imagine wrapping the triceps under and in. They can’t actually externally rotate fully when on a bar apparatus, but this puts them into a more supported, engaged position. For scapular depression, we’re thinking about the tried and true yoga cue to pull your shoulders down your back. And finally, the shoulders are actually in a neutrally engaged position and not fully retracted (squeezed together in the back), however the action of trying to keep the shoulders squeezed back and down as you lower from your inverted position, will steer most people to the right position (retracting fully while in a front lever is actually incredibly difficult). Like I said, there are less hotly contested issues of form in this position. The biggest debate I came across, was how hard to retract your shoulders. We’re sticking with neutral, or slightly retracted over here. What about the rest of your body? Think about your handstand position, or being slightly hollow. Keep excessive curve out of the low back, be fully engaged through the core, don’t pike at the hips, and the eventual goal is to be able to keep those legs squeezed tightly together. This holds true for both Levers, and Planche for that matter.

This brings us to the most debated form cue in lever training. What grip do we use in a back lever? Traditionally, male gymnasts use an underhand (supinated) grip when moving into back lever, with the shoulders slightly protracted and depressed. When transitioning on rings from a dead hang (straight arms, facing forwards) to a back lever, the grip rotates from pronated to neutral (palms inwards) to supinated as you invert through. You can think about the thumbs of the hands turning outwards, as the shoulder rotates through this transition to picture what’s happening. In this grip variation, the end point for your triceps are to glue to your lats, which helps to keep the shoulder in external rotation as well. Here’s an example of the movement on rings with an added press to planche.

Back Lever to Planche

As I mentioned previously, there is fierce debate out there in the FITer-Net about proper grip position in back lever. If you want to waste (or enjoy) an afternoon, browse some fitness forums with keywords “grip in back lever.” The debates is endless. If you search through long enough though, you will start to hear a consistent cry from the Men’s Gymnastics community. This is that supinated grip is essential for building bicep, shoulder and tendon strength (especially the biceps tendon) to enable progress to more advanced gymnastics moves, like Hefesto and Maltese. Of note, the Back Lever, while classified as one of the “hardest bodyweight moves” you can master in Calisthenics, is the base level (Level A) of strength in Men’s Gymnastics. Sigh, progress is always a matter of perspective.

In my experience, an underhand (supinated) grip in back lever has the same proposed mechanical advantage of pressing down on the bar against the force of your bodyweight’s gravitational pull, as the pronated grip of front lever does. Pushing the bar seems easier to me than pulling the bar to overcome gravity, and the propensity to a more internally rotated shoulder when entering a back lever from a pronated grip, isn’t my favorite thing to fight against. Conversely, others in forums state that using a pronated grip makes the move seem easier for them, or that the supinated grip puts strain on their elbow. The pro-supinated grippers claim that this pain is an indicator that they are not actually strong enough to be doing the level of training they are attempting (Full Lever Hold attempts rather than Advanced Tuck Lever Hold attemps for instance), and that they aren’t strengthening properly by going through proper progressions using the supinated grip. Their particular concern is that the biceps tendon is weak, or weaker than the surrounding muscles if progressions have happened too quickly. Here’s an experiment, try putting your hands out straight behind your back while standing. Face your palms up and have a friend (gently) press up on the back of your hands, while you try to resist. Now, face your palms down and have the friend (seriously, be gentle) try to press up on your palms while you resist. For me, the second is easier and more comfortable to all joints involved. I’m curious, what about you? Feel free to spam me with your answers in the comments.

Ultimately, the consensus that seems to have developed in the Calisthenics world is that either grip is okay, as long as you are not having pain, the rest of your form is on point, and you are truly strong enough to be working on these moves by following the proper progressions. I think it’s definitely possible that some people are more natural pullers or pressers due to genetics, and what kinds of movements their body is accustomed to. So, in some sense, while there seem to be functional strength benefits to a supinated grip in back lever, natural preference may be the right answer for how to grip if you’re not training as a male gymnast,* or planning on working on those more advanced moves.

Now, I am an aerialist, and I train aerialists. And we have unique considerations in this debate. If your primary apparatus is Straps or Silks, you can most likely go ahead and apply much of the wisdom from how grip and shoulder rotation in back lever are cued on the rings (remember, thumb rotates from in to out). The difference is that the wrist is put into a different position when gripping a flexible apparatus than when gripping a hard surface. So, while you’d still be thinking about the same shoulder and grip positions, and wrapping in of the triceps and elbow; your grip will most likely actually remain and look more like a slightly neutral grip. Though, I’ve seen both fully pronated and supinated grips on these apparati as well. Since Trapeze is my primary aerial language though, I’ll defer to the experts in these apparati, but my opinion is the best grip for an individual is the one that puts the least strain on the wrists, while keeping them in alignment, and the rest of the body in proper form.

When we approach this move from a Lyra or Trapeze, we encounter a more practical issue to consider. Most of our moves on a Trapeze are going to use an overhand (pronated) grip, and while Lyra moves utilize an underhanded (supinated) grip more often than Trapeze (due to the curve of the bar making this a more ergonomically desirable grip), there are still a good number of situations where you’ll find yourself moving from an overhand grip on this apparatus. Since you cannot simply rotate from pronated to supinated grip on a bar apparatus, being able to enter our back levers safely and strongly from an overhand or underhand grip simply offers us the advantage of more choices in our choreography.

For myself, and my clients practicing back lever on a bar, my advice is to not neglect the supinated (underhand) grip, and even to train with it most of the time, to protect your joints and build the necessary strength in the bicep tendon (as long as this grip is not causing you pain). Keep in mind that it takes tendons longer to strengthen than muscles. I would recommend sticking with the supinated grip as you work on the progressions that you’ll want to go through long before you actually ever try to hold your body in a full lever. Then, once you are ready to hold a back lever (no matter how strong we are in other areas, this could take six months-a year), train with a supinated grip 60% or more of the time, and switch the grip to pronated for the rest of your training. An example of what this could look like at an advanced/intermediate level is 3 sets of the following 4 exercises, performed to failure of proper form (not complete muscle failure): Full or Straddle Back Lever holds (supinated grip), Advanced Tuck or Basic Tuck Lever holds (alternate 2 supinated, 1 pronated grip), Skin the Cats (pronated grip), Back Lifts or Skin the Cats on Rings, Straps or Silks with the grip and shoulder rotation described above.

*For purposes of this blog, I use the term ‘male’ not to make a distinction between male or female identifying people who may be trying to get a Lever, but to distinguish between people of any gender identity who are choosing specifically to pursue training in the style of gymnastics referred to as Men’s Gymnastics.

**Please for the love of your life, always train with a qualified, experienced coach, in person, when trying new things. Use proper landing mats when going upside down. And make sure the equipment that you use is rated and rigged for what you are using it for. For example, over the doorway pull-up bars are not generally made for inversions or dynamic movements. Your safety is only a strong as its weakest link.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. This does not affect what products I recommend.

**The Most Relevant of the Sources and Resources I read for this Post**

http://www.ringfraternity.com/tutorials/back-lever.html