Back Lever in routine

[Troy Kerr]

I remembered a thread on here awhile back in which the question of why does the back lever come first in routines like the killroy70 routine. I was browswing the gymnasticbodies.com forum last night and found a link stating that although the back lever is easier in terms of muscle recruitment, it puts the elbow in a hyperflexed position.
With this in mind, for the past 1 1/2 months i have began working on the supinated back lever, placing it as one of the last movements in my routine following handstand, planche, and front lever work. When workined the supinated position my elbows felt a extreme stretch in a normal tucked position and sometimes felt as though they were gonna explode. Today I put the supinated back lever second in my routine following my planche work and the extreme elbow tension felt as though it was cut in half, I followed up with front lever static work and everything felt fine.
I just wanted to throw this out there for those who may be experiancing similar trouble.

[Blair Lowe]

Yep.

Slizzardman, Slizzy or Liz noted the BL puts a lot of pressure on the inner elbow which is quite tasking as our inner elbow typically isn't subjected to such things naturally while the outer elbow (where FL hits a lot) is typically fine.

Notice that the GB WODS, generally go BackLever, Planche, FrontLever. I used to go Planche, BackLever, then FrontLever but I guess it switches from push to pull exercise.

However, I also played with FrontLever, Planche, then BackLever and that made the BackLevers really suck hard.

Your elbows only hyperflex if they do because you have hyperflexion in your elbows. Still, you are putting load on the elbow. There are quite a lot of gymnasts out there performing crosses and ring handstand or cross handstand with funky hyperflexed elbows with no problems.

[Steven Low]

Yep, that likely means it's too much for you to handle right now.

Back off. Go back to german hang holds and more bent arm strengthening work.

Obviously, this tends to be more of a problem for those who are heavier... but can be easily remedied with bent arm pulling or specific biceps work if you want to go that route.

[Blair Lowe]

Maybe that's a reason I never had problems with it when I first learned it. I had done my share of curls and bent arm strength for quite some time. Failing on MU wasn't pleasant but wasn't lasting back then.

I also wasn't much lighter. 150's.

[Patrick Donnelly]

Curls do great things for the elbows after back levers - seriously.

After holding decently long back levers at 220lbs, my elbows frequently are killing me. A few sets of higher-rep barbell curls at a decent weight (~100lbs) fixes that right up.

[Troy Kerr]

So with all this in mind, how could I structure this in my routine?

[Blair Lowe]

curls at the end of rounds of:

BL, PL, FL, L/Straddle-L/Manna work

[Troy Kerr]

Thanks Blair. So that would be a set of curls at the end of each movement? Are these bodyweight curls on the rings or db/bb curls ?

[Steven Low]

I think he meant it would be your choice.

A good choice is after BL as patrick said.

If you're going to add in the curl variations using the whole body it would be wise to classify that a skill itself. Otherwise, BB/DB curls can be added anywhere.

[Troy Kerr]

Ok. Thanks Steven. As you mentioned about German hangs and other bent arm work, did u mean to use those as a way to completely replace the BL work for this cycle?