5 Reasons NOT to Train the Human Flag

The human flag is a highly coveted bodyweight strength-skill. It can be seen in different forms across different fields of movement including gymnastics, calisthenics/street workout, cirque, and pole sport. It is extremely unique and immediately catches the eye; you don’t see people sideways, seemingly floating in the air very often.

To be able to perform a flag requires a great deal of both strength and body control. It is considered a hybrid skill because it is simultaneously a push and a pull - the top arm is pulling while the bottom arm is pushing in order to support the body horizontally against the force of gravity. And with the body being horizontal, in a sideways spatial orientation, the flag is also a lateral core stabilization exercise.

Though there are other static strength skills which are far more difficult, like the planche and the iron cross, the flag often seems more impressive to the untrained eye because the body appears so much longer when the arms are overhead and the body is fully stretched out horizontally across space. Holding this position requires a unique combination of motor patterns that makes the flag unlike any other exercise; and this novelty might be what makes it so desirable.

But before you commit to training for this illustrious feat of strength and skill, there are some important things for you to know.

Here are all the reasons NOT to train the human flag:

1. Flags don’t make you better at anything else.

You might say that flags are not functional. Training flags only makes you better at doing flags. They don’t actually improve your ability to do anything else, and they might actually make you worse at some things. Plus you have to be really good at a lot of things before you can even begin training flags.

At the very least, you need to have sufficient levels of: range of motion in the shoulders, stability in the overhead shoulder position, pulling strength (especially vertical pulling), pushing strength (especially vertical pushing), core strength (especially lateral), relative strength (as opposed to absolute strength) and body control.

Not to mention that all of these attributes need to be roughly equivalent on the left and right sides of the body; if not, then training flags will likely make the imbalances even worse. More on that with reason #3 below.

So this is a skill that requires you to be good at everything, but training it doesn’t make you any better at those other things which you were already good at doing?

It might not be immediately obvious to most people, but skill transfer is not always bi-directional. Just because A makes you better at B does not mean that B makes you better at A. This can be applied to various areas in life, but here are two simple and relevant examples:

1. Pull-ups will make you better at flags, but flags will not make you better at pull-ups.

2. Straight-arm press handstands will make you better at flags, but flags will not make you better at straight-arm press handstands.

In general, isometric exercises don’t make you better at other movements. Isometric training only confers strength within 10-15 degrees of the joint angle being trained. This is a generalized example of uni-directional skill transfer. Dynamic movements can improve isometric strength, but it is usually not as effective the other way around.

In addition to the limitations of isometric training, I also believe that the complexity of the flag contributes to its lack of skill transfer. Not only is the motor pattern unique due to its asymmetry, but the sideways spatial orientation is probably the least commonly used out of all 6 major orientations (the other 4 are standing, inverted, face down, face up; sideways counts for 2), so the body is not efficient at stabilizing itself and moving in this way. This is probably true of all animals because spending a lot of time sideways doesn’t seem to be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. What a privilege we humans have, to be sideways, whenever we want, for no good reason…

2. Extremely low Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio.

The Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio (SFR) is one of the most important considerations to factor in when you’re choosing exercises for any kind of training program or movement practice. In general, a higher SFR is better. This means that an exercise elicits a high stimulus relative to the amount of fatigue that it generates. The SFR means different things when you’re training for different reasons, so the measure of the stimulus must be specific to the attribute that you desire. Some common attributes that people train for are strength, hypertrophy, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance. Fatigue generally concerns two things - overall systemic fatigue, and joint/connective tissue fatigue. Note that SFR applies not only to exercise selection, but also to the relative intensity and volume of an exercise.

Some examples are helpful here. The first relates to systemic fatigue, and the second relates to joint/connective tissue fatigue.

Let’s say your goal is specifically to improve your grip strength. One way to do so would be doing extremely heavy deadlifts, somewhere around your 3-rep max. This would produce a high stimulus in terms of training your grip strength; but the overall fatigue that the rest of your body would experience does not make this an optimal choice for improving grip strength, especially if you have other goals to train for too. So we have high stimulus and high fatigue, which equals a mediocre SFR. What you might do instead is simply hang from a bar with one hand. The stimulus might be a little bit lower than the heavy deadlifts, but the overall fatigue is probably 100x lower, so the SFR is much more favorable. There are plenty of examples of low stimulus and low fatigue, but generally the exercises that fall into that category are not even considered.

Here’s a great example of joint/connective tissue fatigue, which is extremely prominent in the world today:

Let’s say you want to work on your cardiovascular endurance. You want to start running but you haven’t run in years. Your body is de-conditioned to the impact of running so it puts a lot of stress on your ankles and knees; and that stress limits your ability to to even run hard enough to get a good cardio stimulus. This means low stimulus, high fatigue, and terrible SFR. A better option might be using a bike, rower, or an elliptical because it would allow you to work hard enough to train your cardio. Higher stimulus and lower fatigue equals better SFR.

Flags have an extremely low SFR, especially when you consider reason #1 above, that they don’t help make you better at anything else besides flags. The attribute you are training is essentially just the specific skill of doing flags, holding this one body position in a particular spatial orientation.

When you train flags, you are imposing a high level of fatigue on your nervous system, the majority of the muscles in your upper body and torso, and the connective tissue of your wrists/elbows/shoulders, all so you can get better at this one skill.

Another concept that is closely related to SFR is the Stimulus-to-Time Ratio (STR). STR is pretty easy to understand. How long does it take to actually elicit the desired stimulus? This is total time so it includes things like setting up equipment and resting in between sets. In general, high levels of strength training have a fairly low STR because they require long rest periods between sets. The typical recommendation is to rest 3-5 minutes between sets if you are training purely for strength. If you are training more for hypertrophy or endurance, then the rest times are almost always shorter.

Training flags has a very low STR because it is a high-intensity strength-skill, and you also have to train both sides. Strength exercises that are also high in skill level require especially long rest periods because you want to make sure you are recovered well enough to perform the technique properly (another good example of this is heavy Olympic weightlifting). Training both sides means you’re doing double the number of sets, which roughly equates to double the amount of time.

In addition to the time spent actually performing the flag itself, it also takes a very long time to warm up for flags because they use so many different muscle groups at a high intensity. This should also be factored in when considering if the training is worth your time.

3. Training flags will exacerbate, reveal, and create imbalances.

Flags require an asymmetric motor pattern, meaning that the left and right sides of the body are doing different things. These types of exercises are not very common. The most common exercises are bilateral, where both sides are doing the same thing. There are also unilateral exercises, where only one side of the body is primarily being exercised. Unilateral exercises are often used to correct left/right imbalances, especially when an asymmetry develops through repetitive use of a bilateral exercise.

Everyone has left/right imbalances, literally everyone. Not everyone notices them though because most people don’t do enough exercises (at a high enough intensity) to reveal them.

Flags will almost inevitably exacerbate any left/right imbalances that you have. Particularly relevant are imbalances in your upper limbs and spine, but even imbalances in the hips and legs could factor in because the flag requires full body tension. When the body is weak or unstable in one area, it will compensate and find strength and stability somewhere else.

Even if you didn’t previously know you had any imbalances, flags will reveal them. Strength imbalances in the upper body will be obvious. Range of motion deficits in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists will become apparent. Instability through the spine and pelvis can easily be seen and felt. And depending on the body position, imbalances in the hips can also be revealed. The straddle flag is the most relevant body position to consider here as it requires a high degree of static active flexibility in hip abduction.

There are even imbalances that were previously completely dormant that will be effectively created by training flags. These types of imbalances are present in every single human, but not at all relevant for 99+% of the population, 99+% of the time. The internal organs of every human who has ever lived are asymmetrical. The diaphragm muscle is asymmetrical, and this means that every breath you take is actually a slightly asymmetrical motor pattern. This (along with other factors not discussed here) contributes to an asymmetrical development of the intercostals, the muscles that connect from rib to rib, which are involved breathing. Again, for most people this asymmetry never becomes an issue; but when you are training flags, the intercostals are highly active and highly important.

For any high-intensity strength exercise (squat, deadlift, bench press), and especially static strength skills (planche, front lever, iron cross), the intercostals are active. But for flags specifically, the asymmetric forces on the spine and ribcage that result from the simultaneous pushing and pulling forces require an extremely high level of activation from the intercostals in order to stabilize the torso. The effort from the intercostals is also amplified because the flag is typically performed with a fully expanded ribcage as well, to help increase full body tension (and I suspect that the expansion also helps to increase leverage).

It goes without saying that training flags can easily create imbalances in the muscles of the upper limbs, especially if the form is not precise when comparing the left and right sides.

It is also worth noting that training flags is extremely unlikely to help correct any imbalances that you have. The skill is too complicated and the effort is too intense. Your body will simply compensate for any deficiencies you have. For example, if you noticed that your left arm was not as strong in training one-arm chin-ups, it would not be smart to address that imbalance by training more flags on your left side (meaning the left arm is on top and is doing the pulling motion). A better approach would be to work on isolated unilateral bicep and shoulder exercises.

4. Training requires special equipment.

Not too much to explain here, but it needs to be stated. The convenience and accessibility of exercises is an important consideration. If you have to drive 45 minutes just to get to the one calisthenics park or the one training gym that has the right equipment, then training flags might be highly inconvenient for you (and it lowers the STR described above).

There are two common setups for training flags: a single vertical pole, or two horizontal bars (aligned vertically).

There are plenty of vertical poles/beams in gyms and parks, but most are not ideal for training flags because of their shape or size. Ideally the shape is circular and about 1” in diameter. Deviation from this shape and size will make flags significantly harder.

The horizontal bars are less common, and they come with the caveat of needing to be a certain distance apart. This is not an issue with the vertical pole because you can place your hands wherever you want as long as the pole is tall enough. There is a small range of shoulder positions for optimal strength in the flag, and it is slightly different for different people. A good rule-of-thumb is that your shoulders should be at 45 degree angles when you straighten out your arms. As you get wider and approach a bar spacing that matches your wingspan, flags get significantly harder. As you get narrower, flags literally become impossible (imagine having both hands on the same horizontal bar).

There are other more obscure objects/setups that allow you to train flags, but they are not ideal, especially for beginners. A future blog post will detail what the ideal training equipment would be. Right now, stall bars are the best option that is (somewhat) widely available, if you can find a gym that has them or can afford to buy them yourself.

5. You probably can’t train flags forever.

Maybe this is just my philosophy. It’s worth taking some time to consider why anybody does any kind of exercise in the first place. This topic could easily be a blog post on its own, but I’ll just assume that most people want some combination of three things: to be healthier, to look better, and to do cool stuff. Sometimes there’s overlap between the three, but sometimes there’s not…

Flags certainly are not an exercise that make you any healthier on their own. But you probably need to be physically healthy to consider training them.

Flags don’t really contribute much to fat loss or muscle growth on their own either. But again, if you’re considering training flags then you probably have a decent body composition already.

What about doing cool stuff? Are flags cool?

Hell yeah.

That’s why you’re here, and that’s why I’m here. No more stupid questions…

So how does this relate to the claim that you probably can’t train flags forever? Well if the primary reason for training flags is just to do cool stuff, how long will that matter to you? At some point in your life, don’t you think that you will shift the focus of your exercises towards things that improve the longevity of your health and overall fitness?

Considering the 4 reasons listed above for not training flags, there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of other better exercise choices that don’t have the same problems.

But if I’m being honest, that’s really a reason why you probably won’t train flags forever. Does that mean that you can’t train flags forever?

No, not necessarily. But the vast majority of people won’t be able to. This is obvious because physical abilities inevitably decline as you age. But when you compare flags to other exercises, there are plenty of other exercises which could be trained, in some capacity, for your entire life. Flags, along with nearly all bodyweight strength skills, have a much shorter training lifetime because you can only adjust the difficulty so much. Though you probably aren’t going to deadlift 400 pounds your entire life, you can still deadlift some amount of weight forever. You might not run marathons forever, but you can maintain the ability to run for your entire life. Yoga might be the best example because some people don’t even begin their practice until they’re a senior citizen! Or maybe you venture out into other forms of movement that you don’t necessarily consider exercise, like juggling.

The point is that you should consider what exactly you think you’d like to be able to do with your body for the rest of your life. This doesn’t mean that you can’t challenge yourself while you’re younger and in your physical prime. But it should be viewed with the big picture in mind. No matter what you choose to do, you’re always sacrificing something else that you could’ve done instead. So if you are committed to training flags forever, what are you sacrificing? And it’s not solely about other exercises, but what about the time and energy that could’ve been spent in other ways?

SO WHY DO PEOPLE TRAIN FLAGS?

Well it turns out that there are more than three reasons why people want to exercise and move their body in different ways. I already said that one of the reasons why people train flags is to do cool stuff. And I think it’s a perfectly valid reason. People like seeing cool stuff. People like doing cool stuff. People like talking about cool stuff. Cool stuff is cool.

There are other reasons though, and in my opinion some are better than others.

Here are some of the bad ones:

1. I saw someone else doing it, so I just want to see if I can do it.

2. I believe it will make me better at other things.

3. I want a 6-pack and/or stronger obliques.

4. I want jacked shoulders.

5. I want to show off on Instagram (this was me in 2017).

6. This will help me find a mate (also me in 2017).

Here are some of the good ones:

1. It’s a skill that I use in my sport/performance (cirque, pole sport, street workout).

2. I am pursuing physical mastery of my body and the process of learning flags will teach me new things about myself.

3. I am a high level athlete and this is how I want to explore the outer edges of what is physically possible for humans.

4. I like to continually learn new skills and I want to challenge myself with a novel movement which requires dedicated training.

5. Training flags makes me a better person because it keeps me motivated to achieve at a high level in other areas of my life. If I am not eating/sleeping/recovering properly then I know my training will suffer.

What’s Next?

And why did I just create a community dedicated to training flags, then write the first blog post about all the reasons not to train flags?

I’m not trying to fool anyone. I want this to be my career - coaching people how to do flags, bringing together this community, and facilitating an evolution in this domain of human movement. But I don’t intend to convince anyone that they should be training flags. There’s way too much of that nonsense going on already in the fitness community. This really isn’t for everybody. I’d love to tell you that “anyone can do it if they try hard enough”, but that’s simply not true.

However, this is not an unfathomably difficult skill to learn. Part of the mission of The Human Flag Collective is to accumulate a comprehensive body of knowledge on the best training techniques for learning the flag so it becomes more accessible to more people. Human nature will take things from there; and I predict that within 5 years there will be elementary school kids doing new skills that I can’t even imagine at the time of writing this.

If you’d like to support this movement in any way, subscribe to the newsletter and follow us on Instagram @humanflagcollective.

For coaching inquiries, send a private message to @humanflagcollective or to my personal Instagram account @sidewaysprimate.