(En el enlace hay vídeos y fotos de LO IMPOSIBLE)
NOTE: This is a detailed examination of the challenge of these two elements. If you just want your mind blown with something way harder than any full planche, skip to the bottom of this post.
The Victorian cross on rings is essentially a front lever with arms at body height. It is one of the hardest gymnastic elements, even among the elite gymnasts it is rarely done, as shown here.
The street workout community has embraced this move, and some very strong people like Grzegorz Kowalik, Zoran Pesterac, Flo Lit, Matteo "Deuanuis" Spinazzola and Andrei Kobelev, and several others, have held it with clean form for a few seconds.
The reverse planche in gymnastics refers to the hollow back handstand, but I think the street workout community was right in relating this name to this skill. In the rest of this post I will refer to the second skill with this term.
So when we talk about straight arm elements with a horizontal body, we have two families, with respective skills for a hang, "hand level" and support position.
Prone body: back lever, Maltese cross, planche. These skills require high strength in scapular depression (lats and chest), protraction (chest, serratus anterior), shoulder flexion (front deltoids, biceps long head), and elbow flexion (the elbow is loaded and the bicep prevents it from hyperextending into snap city). Moderate spinal erectors and core strength is required to keep the legs horizontal and posterior pelvic tilt.
Supine body: front lever, Victorian cross, reverse planche. They require high strength in scapular depression (lats and chest), retraction (low and mid traps, rhomboids), shoulder extension (lats, teres major, rear deltoids, triceps long head), elbow extension (triceps, especially for the Victorian and reverse planche). Moderate core and abdominal strength is required for a hollow body position.
Note that the reverse planche is not an acknowledged element in the gymnastics code of scoring, probably because this move is even harder than the Victorian, which is already only for the elite. Probably because it requires extreme strength in shoulder hyperextension, where the prime mover is the rear deltoid and the lats can't even help, they are in a position of insufficiency.
In fact nobody has ever done a reverse planche on rings, the closest thing is the manna, which is a very piked reverse planche. Also note how the tricep is very involved, and the move has some affinity to impossible dips, which are full bodyweight tricep extensions. Also note how in the manna the body line is completely horizontal while nobody has managed a reverse planche without a body line slightly below the manna's level.
In the street workout community, the following moves are affine to the Victorian cross and reverse planche because of the focus on the same muscles:
Parallel bar Victorian. Note the focus on tricep strength to prevent the elbow from bending and sending the body into a vertical position, as shown here.
Single bar Victorian.
Dragon press. Can be held as an isometry or executed as a straight upgrade to the dragon flag, with the limiting factor being shoulder extension strength. In fact the full lay dragon press is around front lever level of difficulty, if I am not mistaken.
One arm dragon press, even harder and the guy in the video is one of a few select in the world who can execute it.
Bent arm Victorian, this is the end range of a full front lever row. Holding the waist against the bar for some seconds is significantly harder than the standard front lever hold.
Parallel bars reverse planche. Really hard because when the shoulder has to extend behind the body line the lats can't help and the rear delts do almost all the lifting.
If you want a lot of examples of variations of these moves, I recommend watching some compilations on the channel Noa Man Workout.
And now the most insane versions of these skills I have seen. In fact I would say this is the current pinnacle of street workout elements in difficulty of execution.
Floor Victorian for 3 seconds. Only the hands support the entire body. Pietro Bruno is 180cm/69kg (5'11, 152lbs) and only 18 years old, who knows what he can still achieve.
Floor reverse planche by Flo Lit. Harder than on parallel bars because by gripping them you get more irradiation by the nerves.
Hasta el infinito y más allá
