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L-Seat

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!


Aug 18, 2010 | Category: Midsection, Tutorial | Comments: 24

 

24 Responses to “L-Seat”

  1. James

    I don’t know if it’s just me, but this tutorial looks half complete.

  2. admin

    Thanks for the catch! We’ve got some hiccups when converting to the new site. Working on the fix now.

    • James

      Okay. A quick question on form – is it alright to start off hanging leg raises with the legs at an angle to the torso instead of them being straight in line? My chin up bar is set at 6’3″ but I’m 6’4″. Obviously at the gym it’s not a problem. It’s just at home.

  3. Fred Peterson

    Question re: form and angles w/torso.

    Is it “beneficial” to work towards a more advanced L-Seat – meaning the body is a more perfect L shape? Currently I’m in a position such that my torso and arms are not in line so rather then being a 90d angle in the L its more like 70d with my arms of course still straight up and down.

    A rudimentary ASCII pic from the side would look like
    /|__
    where as the “full” L-Sit would be
    |__

    • admin

      You will not be able to balance the body in a “perfect” L position. The arms will be as they are in the pictures. The next step is to start working to the V-sit and the Manna.

      • Fred Peterson

        Well then, okay. I was reading another site that talked about this and the fella there was talking like it should be possible. No wonder I feel so unstable trying my damndest to be a perfect L, I figured it was lack of strength! Thanks.

  4. Sheldon

    Any advise for being able to keep legs together in the tuck position on the L-sit.

  5. purush

    why do it on your fingertips when it can be done flat on your palms?

    • Marc

      For combo moves. E.g. L-Seat to handstand press. More elevation is required for such moves.

    • h3X

      For grip strength development.

    • Purush,

      It says in the article that you should go on your fingertips as it will be easier to progress from your fingertips to more advanced stuff like l-seat to handstand press as it will give you more clearance to bring your legs tucked in and rotate to the advanced stuff you like. But if you can do that with your flat palms then don’t worry about going on your fingertips and if all you want to do is a l-seat then just stick with the flat palms :o)

    • Dan

      I think it’s a question of giving yourself more clearance off the ground so you can get your feet and legs behind you without touching the ground.

  6. djjjuk

    a quick question about practice … if im totally struggling to lift myself off the floor, how often should i ‘attempt’ to do so until i can hold it further to build the strength? every day? how many times each session? etc.

    Thanks, great site.

  7. Marco

    Can you do it on your fists? It gives me more heigh than my palms, and it will be a while before my fingers are strong enough to support me fully.

  8. Hi there, when you say “this should be a pretty easy position to hold” in regards to the l-seat, how many seconds would you say you need to hold the l-seat before progressing to l-seat walking?

  9. Cory

    should my elbows be facing backwards so i’m putting my weight primarily on my shoulders/whole arm, or facing outward so i’m using my triceps more?

  10. aleksandar736

    I have a feeling when i try to do the L-seat that can be easily done, but my hamstrings stopped me. There’s no flexibility in them. It’s that normal feeling for begginers?

  11. Shane

    Any prerequisites and or/tutorial for the V-sit? (russian seat)

  12. Ipa

    Hi,

    i would like to know, how long does it take to develop the necessary finger strength for L-Sit?

    Im doing finger lift ups everyday, for a week now.

    Regards,

    Ipa

  13. Tommi

    I have such trouble with this skill, that when I try to get into the position, i get a terrible cramp in my right thigh. I’m able to do hanging leg raises with straight legs in sets of 15, and think I have the strength required to hold the position, but the cramps prevent me from staying there longer than 5 to 10 seconds. Do you know anything that might help me with this?

    • admin

      Roll out the legs and continue to practice. The muscles just need to get stronger!

      Stretching out the hamstrings can help in many cases too.


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