L-Seat Progression and Tricks

L-seat progression and tricks
from: http://www.beastskills.com/L%20Seat.htm
For those completely unfamiliar, this is an L-seat.
As you can clearly see, the legs are bent at a 90 degree angle to the
torso, so that the entire body forms an "L" shape, hence the name.
The L-seat has no motion to it, and requires very minimal balance. It
is a simple skill that is easily acquired by building the necessary
strength. What's one of the best exercises for building that strength?
HANGING LEG RAISES!!

Of course, straight legs is more advanced and if you can do a hanging
leg raise with straight legs, then you're probably already able to do
an L-seat. For those who do not have the strength quite yet, just
hang and raise your legs into a tuck. Or you can head to the gym and
use one of these pieces of equipment-
Whether you use a bar or gym equipment, make sure you are doing
your repetitions strictly. Bouncing and swinging your legs up is
cheating and is a waste of time. No momentum during the exercise!
What if you have no pullup bar or regular access to a gym? No

problem. I didn't have all that "fancy" equipment either when first
learning an L-seat. You know what I used? The ground! Imagine that.
First, get your hands by your sides and lift yourself off the ground in
a tucked position. If this is a struggle, just continue to work on the
position until you can easily hold it for an extended length of time.
10-15 seconds at the very least.
When holding the tuck becomes simple to do, I want you to work on
holding yourself in that same position but up on your fingers instead
of a flat palm against the ground.
So while you started off with your hands like this...
You'll now want to work on supporting yourself up on your fingers,

like this...
Careful not to pop a tendon in your finger though. If your hands are
feeling fatigued, do not try supporting yourself on your fingers. And if
you feel that there's absolutely no way your could support yourself up
on your fingers, then work on finger tip pushups to build up that
strength. The tendon strength necessary to hold yourself up will
develop slowly, so give it plenty of time and rest. When you do have
the necessary hand strength, go back and try the tuck position up on
your fingers.
For those who have told me they have trouble lifting themselves off
the ground into an L-seat, working on your fingertips should get you
up higher and solve your problems. More importantly though, this will
build good strength in your fingers and become helpful for some
combination skills.
The remainder of the progression will be shown up on the fingertips.
So now that you've gotten the tuck position, we'll extend a leg out to
put more stress on the muscles.

Hold for several seconds, come down to rest, then repeat. And make
sure to switch off legs to build strength evenly.
Of course, the next step after that is the L-seat itself.
Your legs should be straight, and this should be a pretty easy position
to hold. If your legs are bent and/or you are shaking to hold the
position, then take a step back and work some more on the previous
positions. If your body is leaning back to hold the position, you also
need to take a step back. The torso should be perpendicular with the
floor.
Quite simple, right?
Below are a couple fun tricks you can do with the L-seat.
For these L-seat tricks, you'll want to get back down on your flat
palms.
This is for the safety of the fingers, which would most likely be
injured due to the stress and motion that would be placed upon
them. To repeat and restate - You should not try these tricks up on
your fingertips!
L-seat walking
Now that you're an expert on the L-seat, get up into the position and
try walking forward. You'll find it easiest to keep your arms straight
and simply lean back and forth while moving your hands forward.
Like a waddle of sorts. I also find it helpful to keep my wrists glued
up at my side - right along the point where your glutes meet your
hamstrings. This should be the natural place your wrists are for the L-
seat anyways, just keep them there when you walk.
This is a killer on your midsection if you try to go for any appreciable

distance.
The two most important lessons to learn from this trick:

1. Keep your wrists glued to your sides
2. Move by leaning your body weight from one side to another - a
shift from side to side.
This will all become very helpful to you as you try...
The L-seat turn

The L-seat turn is a skill where you change the direction you are
facing while in an L-seat. This is one of my favorites because you can
get some considerable speed on the ground. It's just a matter of
learning to shift and control your body.
While you can just turn yourself 90 degrees or 180 if you want, I find
it much more fun to spin around in continuous circles. With a path
looking something like this. (view from above)
Now, you could move yourself around in this path by taking short
choppy steps, similar to the L-seat walking, but if you want to really
nail this skill and fly around the circle, you'll need to take more
sweeping steps.
What this will require though, is that you really lean over as you step
around. So if you look back at the diagram, things will go something
like this.
1. push off your left hand and lean over your right. swing your legs in
a clockwise direction at the same time.
2. as your left hand comes back down to the ground, push off with
your right, lean to your left, and continue swinging your legs around.
3. as your right hand comes back down, push off with your left and
repeat the process.
Piece of cake. It'll just take you a bit of time to get use to the
amount of body lean you need. Too much and you'll put yourself on
your side. Too little and you won't move enough with each hand
switch.
How far along the circle should you be moving each time? Well, you
could easily move 1/4 of the circle each time. I know this because
this skill can also be performed on the parallel bars.
A 180 degree L-seat turn on the P-bars would look like this:
Just like the previous L-seat turn described, this is going in a
clockwise direction as well. Your hands will start on the two black
dots at the bottom. You'll push off with your left hand and swing your
body to the right. As your left hand lands and you are on a single rail
of the P-bars, you'll then push off with your right hand and land it on
the other rail - effectively turning yourself 180 degrees. If you have
parallettes, give it a try.
That tip I gave you earlier - keeping your wrists glued to your side -
comes in very handy here. By keeping your body tight to your wrists,
you will be using the hand and wrist as a solid base and pivot point.
As confusing as this sounds now, it'll clear itself up for you as soon as
you give it a try.
For further clarification, here's a picture of myself doing an L-seat

turn on the P-bars. I currently have no video available for download,
but I've captured the important frame below:

If you look at the still shot above, you can see the body lean that I
previously discussed. I've just pushed off with my left hand and I'm
leaning over my right hand and wrist.
Not much else to do now but go out and try this stuff. Good luck
learning the L-seat and its various tricks!

L-Seat Progression and Tricks

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

L-Seat Progression and Tricks

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

L-Seat Progression and Tricks

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

L-seat progression and tricks

For those completely unfamiliar, this is an L-seat.

HANGING LEG RAISES!!

What if you have no pullup bar or regular access to a gym? No

So while you started off with your hands like this...

You'll now want to work on supporting yourself up on your fingers,

The remainder of the progression will be shown up on the fingertips.

Of course, the next step after that is the L-seat itself.

Quite simple, right?

This is a killer on your midsection if you try to go for any appreciable

The two most important lessons to learn from this trick:

This will all become very helpful to you as you try...

The L-seat turn

For further clarification, here's a picture of myself doing an L-seat

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.