Lever/Planche Moment Calculator
Instructions
Enter your height in inches or centimeters and your weight in the corresponding unit.
What is this calculator even for?
The main purpose of this calculator is to tell you the height and weight adjusted moment at the shoulder created by different body positions when performing a lever based calisthenics exercise like the front lever, back lever or planche. This is meant to give you a sense of the difficulty of the various positions as well as let you see the difference in difficulty caused by height and weight. The calculator also gives you the percentage of the moment of each body position as compared to doing the full version.
Wait, what's a moment?
A moment is the rotational force around a point. In this case, that point is the shoulder joint and the moment is how hard it is to hold yourself in that position. It is not the same as weight, which means that just because you can hold a full lever, doesn't mean you can hold thousands of pounds. It's a force multiplied by distance and in this case, the force is your weight and the distance is how far your center of mass is from your shoulders.
Why is this useful?
It's often hard to progress and track progression on calisthenics lever based exercises since adding weight is not as straightforward as with a barbell. This is meant to give a general idea of the difficulty of each of the progression steps in relation to one another. It's also useful for seeing the effect that height and weight have on the difficulty. The moment numbers are also used as part of our Fitness Score System when calculating your Strength Score for lever based exercises.
What are the different progressions?
Each progression is a different body position. In each position, the trunk is parallel with the floor.
- Full: legs are straight and in line with the torso
- Half Lay: knees are bent 90 degrees with the thighs in line with the torso
- Super Advanced Tuck: knees are bent 90 degrees and thighs are raised 45 degrees from being in line with the torso
- Advanced Tuck: knees are bent 90 degrees and thighs are held perpendicular to the torso
- Tuck: knees are tucked closely to chest
The straddle progressions are performed with legs straight but in a horizontal splits with their inner angle specified as the degrees.
Some progressions are a combination of two different leg positions. For example, one leg tuck means that one leg is held straight (as if doing a full front lever) and the other is tucked closely to the chest.
How does this calculator work?
This calculator uses body segments, anthropometric data, and the user's height and weight to calculate each moment. Since the body segment and anthropometric data are based on the average person, people with different proportions may have slightly higher or lower moments than estimated.
Strength Score and the Fitness Score System
The moment numbers are used to calculate your Strength Score for specific exerises as part of our Fitness Score System. If you're looking to input information for a lever based calisthenics exercise as part of the Strength Score calculator, you'll enter a moment from here instead of a weight.
