Welcome back to the schoolcast, then, it's Jacko and we're here with Sam Oldham because he wants to learn how to do the human flag. So, welcome Sam Oldham, GB Gymnast, I've watched this guy on Telly at London 2012. Phenomenal Gymnast, an athlete, never tried the human flag, that's right. Never before, never tried it, yes. I mean, seeing it on videos, seeing on TV, that kind of stuff, but never out of giving it go. So, what we would have is, just couldn't give up this opportunity to show you guys, when we learnt this, remember we had no Gymnastics experience, what's revin it took us months to learn. We're going to show you, hopefully, we haven't even tried it yet. We're going to show you, hopefully, if you take someone like Sam who's got the strength, got the flexibility, got the flexibility and the shoulders, what they can actually learn in the shortest amount of time. So, let's have a go. Right, so, you've got these in the gym, I call these human flag rack. Right. But you've done what the hell do you do, what do you use these for? So, like, the little kids do like, you see this gap here, they hold higher up and do like leg lifts and stuff. You need to start using these. I think it just makes a place look good, I never really see anyone use it, to be honest. But we're going to make good use of them today, so, before we get going, we want to see with absolutely no coach or anything where Sam is at, if he tries to do human flag. So, you've had no help from us yet, so, like, literally just walking through the door, let's see where you're at and we can take you from there. Right, so just, do you want me to face that well? You can face whichever way you think is most... I feel like this way up. Don't get that way. Right. Nice. So, you can see somebody that's got some amazing foundation of strength, what they can do without any help at all. So, let's just clean that up a little bit. We were swinging about a little bit, so that's like hand placement, how far... The top hand needs to be directly above the bottom arm. You've got the mechanics right at the push pull, so the top arm is pulling and the bottom arm we're going to go on. The top arm is pulling and I'm trying to pull with a straight arm, so we're trying to do an active position. So, I'm going to keep the arm straight, rather than letting bicep do it, we're going to get these middle lower traps trying to sort of suck that shoulder down into the socket. That then allows us to pull the hip on that side up towards the shoulder. If this is slacken, we're having to pull with bicep, we lose that connection. Right. There's like three main things. Top arm pulling, bottom arm pushing, we've got that, we just need to make those two arms straight. And then if we suck that top arm down, I'll give you an exercise to do in a second for that. We're then going to find it easier to connect the hip up to that shoulder. So, I'm trying to make sure hands are directly above each other, so we don't swing. That was one thing. Now, we're going to suck that shoulder in. Oh, nice. That's how the pros do it. So, we're going to look into like a bit of a applied, what we call a applied strength thing, and movement patterning where you've got the general gist of it and the base strength is really in the shoulders as well as the shoulder. Flexibility, great. That overhead position, we'd expect nothing less for a gym. But we're just going to go back a stage just to give ourselves the opportunity to brain, just to learn and feel the movement in a slightly less demanding in terms of strength exercise. Make that connection between top arm pulling, bottom arm pushing, and when that top shoulder is sucking, it's like pulling down actively, sucking into the socket we can get the hip up to that shoulder. Well, I'm pretty certain after like three or four minutes we're holding and going back to the bar. So, this is what we call the angle flag. So, if someone that's just starting out, they might be going to take them up a few weeks or so to build up to this, but you're already there. So, rather than me being putting my hands directly on the vertical pole, if I take my hand out to the side, I'm not going to be able to get myself fully horizontal, but I'm going to be like at a 45 degree angle. Then I'm not fighting gravity in that horizontal position fully. It's a much easier position in terms of strength, but you're going to be able to create a nice straight line. You'll be able to get that top arm super straight and just work focus on, sucking that shoulder in. So, top arm is going to go off from the side, bottom arm pushing, and then I'm going to suck that shoulder down, and then I'm going to push with this bottom arm and squeeze this hip towards the shoulder. So, I'm going to suck him in first, like a single arm active, how you always suck him in, push with the bottom arm and squeeze the hip up towards the shoulder. That's what moves the legs, squeezing the hips towards the shoulder. You don't actually, you're not trying to move your legs right, they come with the hip. Yeah, there we go. So, just get this, get this like sucking action first of that single arm, so I like to do this one. So, you can try to draw this shoulder blade down, that's it. And then you push away, then squeeze this towards that. Nice. So, try to produce some of these, you feel that through that top arm. Yeah. Trying to suck him down. So, you're trying to drive this shoulder down towards the opposite hip. Yeah, bottom arm, that's it. So, this, that's it, and then squeeze that to the side. Good. That is an angle flag, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. Yeah, so Jack, is it, do my arms need to be a certain kind of whip for? Yeah, like if you're too wide or too narrow, that's going to make it more difficult. So, there's a sweet spot, there is a video we did where we measured our wing span. So, fingers, it's a fingertip to try and then give us something to relate to. My arms are slightly longer than yours, so I'm going to have a slightly wider thing. It just depends whether you go a complete wrong. So, I was in here. Yeah. So, it's whether you can get off, whether you have, did you have your hand on that top arm? No, I think I went there. Yeah, you were. You go anywhere the first time, I'm on there. I think I'll do that, maybe. Yeah. That'll be you. But then, so, make sure to stop that swing. Yeah, and there's onto it, you need to be directly on top of it. Yeah, yeah. So, I'll support your legs, leave. I'm going to support his legs, let him feel the whole position. Make sure we take exactly what he did over on with that angle flag. Yeah. And then, I know you've got the strength, I'm just going to let you go. Okay. So, push chest through. Come back down, come back. I'm going to need to get your whole body. So, if my hands are here, I can't afford to have my chest back here. Right, okay. I need to get myself through. Right, yeah, yeah. So, when I said push your chest through, yeah. Open those shoulders up. Think about like... Think about a wide handstand. Yeah, actually get your chest through. That's better. Yeah. And then push your way. Sook that top arm in. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. So, keeping. Nice. This is nice, much nicer position. All right, okay. We need to crank that top arm, that hip. That top arm. That top arm down, that hip towards that top arm. That's better, got it, got it, got it. There we go. That's the one. Easy. All day. Nice job. Now you put me in there. At first time it felt like way different to that. Just because you put me in, you got me in the correct position and using my shoulders in the right way. Yeah, so I think you opened, we're getting on that plane. Yeah. You open that bottom shoulder up. And it's like, literally, I probably should have said it to you before because you're going to know what a handstand is. Like, it's literally a handstand, put on your side. Yeah. It was a little bit worried because I thought it was going to be better. That last one of you were like, you didn't open that bottom shoulder up. Yeah. And then that one then, I'd say it's better than mine. It just shows you if you build up a solid foundation of strength, stability and flexibility that Sam's done through years and years of gymnastics. With you know the right techniques and you give yourself the opportunity and the brain opportunity to learn that, you can learn it. He's bound to be still learning it in five to ten minutes. That's not going to be normal. It took us months because we went to absolutely no base knowledge of this whatsoever. But it does just show you if you build up that spend some time building up your base foundation of strength, instability, you can do impossible things. So until next week. Class dismissed. So if you want to see whether Sam can squeeze the human flag and his new trick that he's learned into one of his routines and see what the gymnastics community thinks of it, make sure you check him out on YouTube and on his Instagram there in the description below. Thank you.