How to do the Human Flag?

 Hey there, and welcome to this new article! 😄

After the Front Lever, let's discover another iconic move in Street Workout together: the Human Flag.

The Human Flag is an iconic move that symbolizes body mastery in space. It seems to defy gravity, but it's achievable for everyone with dedication, no matter your height or weight.

Having a dream is great. Here, I'm giving you a complete system to make it happen. This guide will give you all the keys to soon hoist your own colors to the wind.

So, let's dive into the prerequisites without further ado! 🔥

HUMAN FLAG PREREQUISITES AND PROGRESSION 

The Flag requires you to push and pull while maintaining a solid sheathing, including the lateral chain. Before you start, make sure you can do a dozen pull-ups, dips and are comfortable with leg raises. A good grip is essential, so practice one-arm hangs and use liquid chalk.

Mastering the Dragon Flag is a plus, or training it in parallel can help. To work the sides of your body and keep motivated, learn the semi flag:

Arm positioning is crucial. For the front support, place your elbow in your stomach and hold without touching the ground. Then move on to the side support, placing your elbow to the side. Contract your body and force your arms to gradually raise your semi-flag to the horizontal. : 

HAND PLACEMENT

 Now, let's move on to the full Human Flag, which can be done with three different grip types:

1. Vertical Bar Grip : The top hand is pronated (palm facing forward), the bottom hand is supinated (palm along the bar).

2. Two Horizontal Bars Grip : Palms facing each other, hands directly one above the other.

3. Mixed Grip : All other possible combinations, like a hammer grip or more exotic variations.

The vertical bar grip makes the exercise harder because your body tends to rotate around the bar. To start, I strongly recommend training with two horizontal bars, or at least using this grip for your top hand. The grip width will depend on your comfort and the equipment available.

THE HUMAN FLAG WARM-UP

For your general warm-up, you can stick with the same one you use for your usual workouts, including some pull-ups and dips. 

For the specific warm-up, the standing obliques are ideal, as well as standard planking on the floor. Speaking of core exercises, here's a series of increasingly difficult positions that I like to call the "flag preliminaries".

You can use them to warm up, consider them the first progressions to master to reach the final exercise, or, if you're already at a good level, skip them entirely and get straight to the main event. 

THE HUMAN FLAG STATIC PROGRESSIONS

Regarding the Human Flag, let's talk about static progressions. First, let's make a small distinction between two types of flags:

1. The Front Flag: This position is similar to the Front Lever or Dragon Flag, where the front of your body faces the sky.

2. The Side Flag (or simply the Human Flag): Your body faces sideways.

In my opinion, the Front Flag is easier than the Side Flag. In these progressions, we'll use both types because they are complementary, and some positions don't work well with the Side Flag. For example, we'll avoid doing tucks in a side flag, as it shifts your center of mass, unbalancing you and risking making you spin. Let's start with the first progression:

1) The 45-degree Flag : This progression is useful, but you can skip it if you don't have the necessary setup.

2) Assisted Human Flag Hold

Next, move on to the assisted flag hold. For this, here are some important execution tips:

- Position : Don't face the ground or the sky, but directly to the side. Open your chest wide and keep your head between your arms, not behind them.
- Arms : Keep your arms straight. Pull with your top arm and push with your bottom arm. Actively push with your entire arms, including your shoulders, without sticking them to your head, which is a common mistake when you're starting out.
- Plank : Practice the planking we talked about earlier to help you hold this position.

Start by assisting the flag hold with your feet, then gradually less and less, until you can hold the active flag hold for 10 to 15 seconds.

3) Active Human Flag Hold

4) Shoulder Press

The active support shoulder press will help you a lot for what's next. It can definitely make the next step easier for you.

5) The Human Flag Jump

Here, you're going to practice jumping high enough while engaging your arms and abs to get into an upside-down, vertical flag, tuck position. Make sure to stay in an active, stable support with straight arms.

6) The Tuck Front Lever 

The Tuck Front Lever: Lower yourself in a controlled way from the vertical flag and hold the position for at least 5 seconds. If you find this difficult, do negative repetitions, slowing them down gradually until you can completely hold the horizontal position.

If you're stuck, go back one or two progressions and work on positive repetitions.

The next 3 progressions aren't always necessary, test them out and keep the ones that work best for you.

7) One-Leg Front Lever

Like all exercises in this sport, one-leg variations are always done with the thigh perpendicular to the body, keeping it straight, and not with the knee pulled against the chest, which breaks the entire execution.

8) Straddle Side Lever

The Straddle Side Lever is lowered from the top. Make sure your body forms a cross and avoid keeping your bottom leg too close to horizontal.

For this variation, as with many others, having someone with you or filming yourself occasionally will help you better evaluate and correct your execution. 

9) Bent-Leg Side Lever

If you feel that keeping half of your legs bent backward throws you off balance too much, it might be better to avoid this variation. Otherwise, try doing it by bending only one leg.

10) The Front Lever

That's it, we're almost there. It's time to tackle the full Front Lever. Try to keep your body as straight as possible, without arching your back.

11) The Flag

And finally, it's time to launch, or rather, lower into, your first real flags. If you feel it's still a bit too hard or your execution isn't quite there, focus first on negatives by slowing down the descent as much as possible.

Once you can hold it for 5 solid seconds in a row, there'll be no doubt: your dream will have become reality 🔥.

12) The Flag Press

From the ground, this is a much harder move to achieve than lowering into it from the top.

Tip:

Finally, a little tip to help you on your flag journey: use resistance bands to assist you. I recommend placing them between your legs. Be careful to attach them in a way that they don't make you pivot.

COMMON MISTAKES

I'm going to go over 3 common mistakes you might see with the Human Flag. 

Keep your bottom shoulder retracted. As we've seen, you really need to avoid facing the ground instead of directly to the side.

Mistake 2:

Bending your arms during the effort is really something to avoid and often indicates a lack of straight-arm strength, which can only be trained with straight arms. It's important to correct this right away.

Otherwise, you risk getting stuck sooner or later and having to start all over again.

If your hips drop or are turned too far upwards, or if your back and body are too arched, it often means you're skipping steps. In that case, it's better to get stronger with easier progressions.

HUMAN FLAG TRAINING PROGRAM

To structure your Human Flag training, I recommend training 2 to 3 times per week on non-consecutive days. In each session, do 3 to 6 sets of your maximum hold time per side, for a total of 6 to 12 sets.

Manage your rest times yourself so you can give your maximum every time! 💪

HOW TO TAKE IT FURTHER? 

Let's finish this article by talking about how to go further after mastering the classic Human Flag!

Learn to do it on a straight bar and hold it for longer and longer. Train with dynamic repetitions doing full flag raises, or try to add weight to your flag.

Need a strength training program to get stronger, lose fat, or transform your body? We've got what you need right here 🔥

For quality sports and street workout equipment, visit my shop!

In the meantime, keep up the good work and take care of yourself!

See you soon.

Eric Flag