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Once you have mastered the front lever, you’re might wonder what’s next in your journey?
Remember that in gymnastics, the front lever is considered an easy skill. There are tons you can follow up next after mastering the front lever to further increase and test your skill, and mental, physical capabilities.
Once you have reached the last progression in the front lever path (Link to article 6), this opens more doors for harder, gravity-defying, cooler calisthenics moves. Don’t be complacent once you have mastered the full front lever. There are tons of moves you can do to make the front lever even harder.
What do you need for attempting these skills?
There’s only one requirement and obviously, it’s a very solid front lever hold. You should have completely mastered the isometric exercise as well as the entry points to the hold to ensure you’ll have safe and actual progress when trying to learn the skills.
Below are the next steps you can take after reaching your front lever. Take the challenge and progress even further in your calisthenics journey.
🤜Front lever pulls
If you have mastered the front lever hold, the next step is by adding dynamic movement to the exercise.
Front lever pull is basically a pull-up while in front lever position. Your motion would be similar to doing a bodyweight row, but instead of your hands near your chest when pulling up, your hands will be near your abs when in the top position of the pull-up. All this while holding the front lever makes it much more difficult.
The exercise activates similar muscles but puts more stress on your arms and lats since you’ll be engaging them in full range of motion. There will positions that you might not be used to. But if you have practiced the easier variations, you might find this exercise more familiar to execute.
Once finished with this variation, you’ll get much stronger and the variations you can play with will be endless.
👍How to perform:
- Enter the full front lever hold.
- Pull your arms forward to your lower abs while maintaining full body position.
- Lower back down to the full extension of your arms with front lever position.
- Repeat and get your back strong as hell.
🤜One arm front lever
One arm front lever from Osvaldo Lugones
This move is an excellent unilateral exercise to balance out any weaknesses in your non-dominant arm.
One arm front lever is also a cool and awesome move to leave everyone in awe. Of course, this means there is a lot of demand on your arm since there’s only one to hold you upright.
As much as the additional demands on your arms, there would be more demands on your lats and core, too. You need to develop stronger lats to keep you upright. Your core needs to keep you from falling to the side which is usually a dilemma in form. Balance is also a struggle so keep everything tight when executing the move.
When training for this move, keep in mind to train both arms one at a time. You don’t want to create any muscle imbalances. Even your non-dominant side needs some loving.
👍How to perform:
- Enter the regular front lever position.
- Let go of the bar/rings with one arm and place it overhead for balance.
- Hold the position for a set amount of time.
- Repeat on the other side.
🤜Transitions
This is the fun part where you can get your creative juices kicking.
Transitions are essentially combinations of moves. By this time, you should have mastered front lever and other advanced calisthenics skills as well.
Here are a few examples just to get you thinking:
- Front lever to back lever
- Planche to front lever
- Front lever to handstand
- Pull-up hold to front lever
- Maltese to front lever
The variations and options are endless. You can even add your own style and flavor to the transitions by adding unique moves in between the holds. You can even add something unique to your entry to front lever, for example, walking to your front lever.
One you get even more comfortable. You can also play with your hand and arm positions. This will generate more demands on different parts of your body depending on the position you have chosen. You can also choose any surface you want to hold on to. No need to look for a bar or gymnastics rings. Do front lever wherever you want, whenever you please.
See what’s there and find what you can do with many dynamic movements from there. Pretty much anything that you can do could be combined together after you unlock front lever.
Are you ready to take your front lever journey to even further heights?
