Feeling healthier and having more energy are just a few of the side-effects from working out. In addition, it's pretty obvious that with training you will gain more muscle. But, have you considered what having more muscle can do for you.
Yes, you can lift heavy objects and save damsels in distress, but even cooler than that are the new skills you can acquire. Hence, we are here to introduce you to the new skills that will become available in your near future. Use them to help motivate you in your training. Today, we are going to talk about the most basic of all the calisthenics skills: The Back Lever.
This move, displayed above, involves holding yourself in a horizontal position with your torso parallel to the ground. Although this skill does involve an immense amount of core strength, participants feel the most strain of the skill on their shoulders and elbows. This is because the muscles that cross these joints are being stressed at almost full extension.
Remember this graph I showed in a previous blog post. Here, I have put a big red dot reflecting where on the graph our muscles are being strained during this skill. You can see that because of the great extension in the muscles, there is very little amount of cross-over, making it difficult for the muscle to create a big force. |