For whatever reason I find my favorite thing to do on the Triple Gym are back lever progressions.  The foam covered bar on the dip attachment is just comfortable for me.  Last night I also used it to do some inverted shoulder shrugs which it also worked out well for.

I made the mistake of doing my first back lever attempt with a wide, neutral grip.  With this grip you are unable to press your upper arms against your lats for additional support.  I felt the additional strain go right into my forearms and elbows, both of which are quite painful today.

I then switched to my favorite grip, tight overhand.  A couple times I got very close to holding parallel, probably less than 10 degrees away.  I could maintain that position for a few seconds.  With my very long and lanky appendages, gravity really applies a lot of leverage to my anchor points when doing an lever.  To get this close was encouraging.

It has been suggested to me a couple times that I may have better success if I popped into the hold from a Skin the Cat instead of trying to slowly lower into position which burns precious power.  I’ll have to give it a try.  My biggest problem is I have an absolutely awful sense of body position when doing levers.  I can’t tell accurately how close or far I am to parallel to save my life.