LA Fit Expo is among the biggest fitness events in the USA, featuring 24 competitions including parkour/freerunning, feats of strength, strongman, powerlifting and many more, along with Battle of the Bars.
The video below is from the main event of the Battle of the Bars between Tatted Strength and Samer Delgado. Get ready for parallel handstand pushups, parallel and regular planches, various levers, jumps, spins…and even a backflip on a bar and a six-fingers planche.
I was actually there, but haven’t had enough time to really enjoy the show as I was too busy running a booth with my brother for our herbal company, SuperMan Herbs. If you are tired of supplement companies who load their products with all kinds of stuff and want to focus on your health first and foremost, check us out at SupermanHerbs.com .
The wall spin is a great flip to start with if you are just getting into parkour and tumbling. Even though it is a basic parkour movement, most people can’t figure out how to perform it on their own.
Here’s a great tutorial by Ryan Ford on how to do it. After you’ve found an appropriate wall with something soft beneath it (like grass, a mat, etc. ), you’ll want to hit it at the right angle – 45 degrees works the best. As you’re running towards the wall, you need to jump off with both feet about 4 ft (or arms length) away from the wall. Make sure to keep your top hand pointing towards the movement, while keeping your other hand pointing towards the ground.
At this point you’ll want to lean forward and once you’re in that upside down position, move your top hand out of the way to avoid falling down. At the same time, keep your bottom hand on the wall and basically use it as a pivot point. The momentum will take care of the rest if you applied enough force in your jump and you should be landing safely on your feet.
I put together a short video showing some on the recent progress I’ve made in gymnastics. There’s plenty of other things but I don’t get everything on film.
The first move shown here is a back lever on the rings. This is a strength movement that requires whole body tightness and coordination. You’ll noticed I’m straddling the legs which lessens the leverage slightly.
Just lowering into a horizontal position takes skill, especially being able to know when you’re parallel to the ground. It’s helpful to have someone tell you when you’re there.
As in the case with all these moves I had better attempts but they weren’t always caught on film.
The next move is an aerial. This is like a cartwheel done without the use of the arms. I still figured I was weeks or even months off from being able to do these but all of a sudden I was successful.
This move tends to be much easier for women due to hip flexibility. What I may lack in there I try to make up for in power. The landing was not graceful but I have since duplicated the move gradually making more improvement.
The third is a goal I set just because I thought it would be fun. My goal is 10 backflips in a row. In the video I do seven. Since then I have hit nine.
The difficult part about this is two-fold. One, I get dizzy and my take-off becomes less vertical giving me less space to flip. Secondly, it’s tiring to do such an explosive move over and over.
Hope you enjoyed the video. With my new gym I have some exciting projects in store. Stay tuned.
Good Luck and Good Gymnastics,
Logan Christopher
P.S. Nothing takes the place of practice but learning is a way to start and build the foundation. To do many of the moves I recommend Tumbling Illustrated. You’ll learn tons of tumbling moves whether you’re beginner or advanced.
Progress has been real good in my gymnastics class recently.
Here I wanted to show a backflip video of not one but five backflips in a series.
They’re not the prettiest back tucks but they are getting increasingly easier to do. A week or two ago was the first time I could ‘see’ the ground as I flipped. I don’t think it was that I closed my eyes before, just that the ground moved to fast.
In this series I was jumping too far back with each one. It was near the end of the night and I was fatigued. Plus it gets hard doing backflips repeatedly as I begin to get dizzy and jumping straight up becomes even harder. But for the most part my take off, my tuck and everything is better than ever.
With the progress here I’ve even started doing these backflips again outside at the beach, on grass and dirt.
It’s funny. Back flips are one of the easier basics of tumbling (much easier than a standing front flip!) yet they can be one of the scariest moves to do. Once you get over that fear and progress to being able to safely doing this skill you may find it can be easy. For more details on getting started check out the article How to do a Backflip.
My current goal is to do ten in a row like this. After that I’ll move on to more difficult variations like those found in Tumbling Illustrated.
Maybe you’ve heard of slacklining before. Maybe you haven’t. Either way this slackline video shows some of the best tricks I’ve ever seen.
Before this I had never seen backflips, front flips and other crazy tricks on the slackline.
Considering I tried to mount a slackline one time and it took about 20 minutes before I could even stand on it with some steadiness I give these athletes a big shout out for their skills. It takes an entirely different form of balancing.
