I have a new Return of Kings article on the sport of gymnastics, and how it can be helpful to the masculine for developing total body strength and dexterity.

The amount of total body strength you need to pull off a maneuver like [the front lever] is nigh mythical in our age of weakness-indeed, your average Olympic class men’s gymnast is quite capable of deadlifting twice his own bodyweight, in addition to having world-class levels of agility and dexterity. Such strength and dexterity is also needed to use the pommel horse or (my favorite) the rings.

Just to make something clear, I am not an Olympic class gymnast—I’m 6 feet tall and I currently weigh 210 pounds. Even when I cut the fat and get to my absolute leanest, I’m still somewhere around 175-180 pounds. Clearly, a career in elite level gymnastics is not in my future. With that being said, I feel that I have been made stronger by my use of gymnastic training (mostly referring to the static positions that represent the fundamentals of the sport), especially since I have unfortunately been laid up these last few months. And there is no reason that you couldn’t use these equally as well.

One of the most basic techniques, a fundamental primer in developing the core strength for future endeavors, is that of the L-Sit and it’s sister, the V-Sit. I have briefly discussed these in a previous article, but today’s article will go over each individual step to attaining these difficult maneuvers.

While I understand that gymnastics are, indeed, kind of gay, they’re also quite useful and thus I will ask you to swallow your pride and utilize this highly useful set of training techniques, beginning with the simple, yet difficult, L-Sit

You can read the gymnastics article here