 Welcome back to Schoolcast Thenx. It's Jaco 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 and athlete. Never tried the human flag though, right? Never before, never tried it, yeah. Seen it on video, seen it on TV, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But never actually given it go. So what we would have is just couldn't give up this opportunity to show you guys when we learned this, remember we had no gymnastics experience whatsoever and 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 stability, got the flexibility in the shoulders, what they can actually learn in the shortest amount of time. So let's have a go. All right, so you've got these in the gym, I call these human flag rack. Yeah. But you don't do what the hell do you do and what do you use these for? So like the little kids do like, you see this like gap here, they hold higher up and do like leg lifts and stuff. You need to start using these. I think it just makes the 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 coaching or anything, where Sam is at, if he tries to do human flag. So you've had no help from us yet, so I've literally just walked in through the door. Let's see where you're at and we can take you from there. All right, so just do you want me to face that way? You face whichever way you think is most. Feel like this way. So you can see somebody that's got some, an 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 of the push pull. So the top arm is pulling and the bottom arm, we're going to go one up. 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 mid-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 slack and we're having to pull with bicep, we lose that connection. So 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 or give you an exercise to do in a second for that, we'll then 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 they don't swing. That was one thing. Then we're going to suck that shoulder in. That's how the pros do it. So we're going to look into like a bit of applied, what we call applied strength and movement patterning where you've got the general gist of it and the base strength in the shoulders as well as the flexibility to create that overhead position. We'd expect nothing less from a gym class. But we're just going to go back a stage just to give ourselves the opportunity, the 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 itself, like pulling down, actively sucking into the socket, we can get the hip up to that shoulder and then... Well I'm pretty certain after like three, four minutes we'll go back so this is what we call the angle flag. So this is for someone that's just starting out, they might want to take 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. Push with the bottom arm and squeeze the hip up towards the shoulder. That's what moves the legs. I'm squeezing the hip towards the shoulder. You don't actually, you're not trying to move your legs like they come with the hip. So just get this like sucking action first of that single arm. So I just want you to draw this shoulder blade down, that's it and then you push away and then squeeze this towards that. Nice. You feel that through that top arm? Yeah. Trying to suck him down. So we're trying to drive this shoulder down towards the opposite hip. Yeah, that's it. So this down to there and then squeeze that to the side. Good. Fold it. That is an angle flag, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. Yeah, so Jaco 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 make it more difficult. So there's a sweet spot. We, there is a video we did where we measured our wingspan. Yeah. So finger, it's a fingertip to try and then give us something to relate to. I'm, 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 go, whether you, did you have, did you have your hand on that top arm? No, I think I went there first. But you go where you were the first time on there. I think you've got that maybe. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be you. But then so make sure to stop that swaying. Yeah. If one hand is onto, he needs to be directly vertical, directly on top of it. Yeah. So I'll support your legs. I'm going to support his legs, let him feel the whole position. Make sure we take exactly what you 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. So push chest through. Come back down. Come on. I want you 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. There. So when I said push your chest through, open those shoulders up. Think about like, think about a wide handstand, how you actually get your chest through. That's better. That's better. Yeah. And then push away, suck that top arm in. Hold, hold, hold, hold. So keeping nice. There's a nice, a much nicer position. Right. Okay. We need to crank that top arm, that hip, that top arm down, and that hip towards that, that top arm. And that's better. I've got it. I've got it. I've got it. There we go. That's the one. Easy. All day. Now you put me in there. That first time, it felt like way different to that, just because you put me in, you've got to be 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 were going to know what a handstand is. Like it's literally a handstand, but on your side. Yeah. I was a little bit worried because I thought it was going to be better. That last one, you were like, you didn't open that bottom shoulder up. 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 managed to learn it in five to minutes. That's not going to be normal. It took us months because we went through 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 and stability, you can do impossible things. So until next week, class dismissed. So if you want to see whether Sam can squeeze the human flag, 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.