Dragon flag tutorial

I decided to make a tutorial for the dragon flag-a favourite exercise of Bruce Lee, and I think, one of the best abs exercises that exists. It will develop incredibly strong abs. The contraction generated is insane and the first time you do it, you'll probably be sore for a week, even if you don’t train till failure.

There’s a video at the end of this tutorial.

Warning

This is an advanced exercise with the injury risk being high. It's very important that you pay attention to your form, have a spotter in the beginning, read this full guide, and only attempt this when you're ready. Consult your doctor before starting any exercise programme and attempt this at your own risk. I take no responsibility for what may happen.

What is it?

You lie face up on a bench while holding onto it with your hands by your head. Then you simply lower and lift, switching your body from being vertical to horizontal and vice versa while keeping the entire body straight. The video explains it much better.

Basic rules

1. When you're in the vertical position demonstrated in the picture, make sure you're resting on your shoulder blades and not your neck. Try and keep your back off the bench .

2. Do not rest on your neck as this can be dangerous.

3. Stay tight throught the entire exercise. It's okay to rest briefly at the top and at the bottom of the movement but stay tense throughout the movement. Flex your entire body, especially the abs and buttcheeks. You wanna be as stiff as a board.

4. Don't bend at the hips, even on the easier progressions. It's okay to bend at the knees when you first start out but not at the hips. The picture below shows what you don't want to do.

5. Don't train till failure (i.e don't train untill you fail at completing a rep. Always have at least one more rep in the tank), do 3-5 reps with only 2 sets. You can do this 2-3-5 times a week. If you're just starting out, twice a week is enough. Don't be in a rush, that's the fools way.

How to progress

You probably won’t have the strength to do the full dragon flag right away so let’s move onto progressions you can use to build up to this. I've split it into three stages

Stage 1

lie face up on a bench with your hands by your head holding onto the bench, pulling it upwards. In the beginning you won’t have the strength to just lift yourself up with a straight body so what you do is cheat your way up by bringing your knees towards your chest and then pushing your legs up so that your body is as straight and vertical as possible. You want to try and rest on your shoulder blades and have your back off the bench. Bend at the knees only.

Next lower yourself slowly and with control until your feet touch the board (or you can move further down the bench so that your feet go over the board and below parallel). Once you’re at the bottom, lift yourself up into the start position again but again, don’t bend at the hips. If you can’t lift yourself up, simply cheat your way up again and just do the lowering part of the exercise until your strength increases.

^ bent leg dragon flag top position

^Bent leg dragon flag bottom position

Stage 2

Okay so once you can do the bent leg dragon flag without any problems it’s time to move onto the next progression. The next step is to straighten out the legs.You’re just going to be doing negatives (the lowering half of the exercise) so lower yourself slowly until you’re horizontal. Then cheat your way back up and do it again. You might be surprised at how much more difficult the exercise becomes by just straightening the legs and may not be able to lower yourself in a controlled way. If that’s the case, just straighten your legs as much as you can until you’re strong enough to lower yourself while having them completely straight.

Stage 3

Once you’re able to do 2 sets of 5 perfect reps of just the lowering part of the exercise, you can try to do a full dragon flag. Lower yourself until you are horizontal and then lift yourself up all the way back to vertical while keeping the entire body straight. It’s okay to use a slight bit of momentum to lift yourself up at first but keep it controlled so you don’t injure yourself. Eventually you want to cut out the momentum completely.

Once again you might find that the gap between the negative and the full dragon flag is too large. In that case you can continue practicing thelowering part of the exercise and at the same time practice the dragon flag without the full range of motion. So instead of lowering yourself all the way down untill you're horizontal, you could go halfway so you create a 45-degree angle and then lift yourself up back to vertical while keeping the entire body straight.

Video demo

Watch the video below to see a demonstration

Well, that’s it you’ve made it!

Adjusting the variables according to your goal

Obviously if you haven’t got the strength to do this exercise, you can forget about endurance or any other goals. That’s why I said don’t train till failure and only do 2 sets of 5 reps with long rest periods between sets. However, when you’re strong enough to do the exercise easily you can adjust all the variables according to your goals. If you want to train for size or for endurance instead of pure strength you can add more sets, decrease rest periods etc.

Getting six-pack abs

To get the six-pack, abs exercises are only one part of the equation and in some cases not even required. To have visible abs you need to have a low body fat percentage so check out this article on a great fat loss method.

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