Crow Entry & Exit: 15-Min Arm Balance Tutorial for BJJ

So look up, tilt your hips away, keep your toes tucked and then as you look back, lift your knees up, back into like a weird dog. Looking up, lift your knees up. Good, three more of them. Knees in.

Good, two. And again, reverse. Nice. Okay, now think about your weight in your arms.

So I want you to lower your front down to the mat, but I want you to try and keep your forearms nice and straight up from the floor. And I'm going to hinge at the elbows as my front comes down, my shoulders coming down in front of me. So down. Good, then try and bring yourself back up.

Back down. Just do three more. Last one up. Last one down.

Good. From here, bring your hands forward slightly and just lift the chest using the muscles in the back. Maybe a slight push on the mat. Little rest here.

Good, lower. Let's inhale, lift. And lower. Two more.

Inhale, lift. And lower. Last one up. And lower.

Good. Bring yourself back to all fours now. Sit back onto your heels and we'll focus on crow. If you've not done any of my crow instructions before or any of Sebastian's, just think about plank hands and then my knees are going to go just above my elbows on my triceps.

Okay, they're not going on the point of my elbow here and it's just too hasty when you get there and try and think about heels to bum when you to crow and think about where your weight is and using the ends of your fingers as breaks. So as my weight comes forward in a second, I'm going to push my fingers down into the mat to bring my weight back. So this first one, we're not going for hang time, we're going for understanding. So let's sit back into a squat now.

Hands in plank, maybe a little wider to begin with. Index fingers parallel. You can turn the hands out a little more but start with parallel index fingers and see how you go. And then lift your hips up and I'm going to do a slight bend in my elbows.

Okay. Just so that I can bring my knees just above my elbows in my triceps. Then I'm going to come forwards, lift my heels lightly, use the ends of my fingers to push me back. Okay, that's what we're going to do.

We can do that three more times, not going for hang time again, just so that we get the understanding of pushing back. So let's come back up, lift the hips, bend in the elbows, bend the knees, slot them in, point the toes, lift the hips, push yourself back. Good. Let's go a bit quicker now.

Back up, bend, bend, forwards and back. Okay, one more. Let's get up, bend, knees go in the same place, lift the heels, push yourself back. Good.

And that is all you need to do to start with to rep out crow. If you're going up straight away to begin with to hang and you're just falling, falling, falling, that's fine but try and do it to get the understanding so you're getting that balance of going forwards and then you can start to think about holding yourself there. Okay, so it's not just this like chill passive thing. You want to be active where you are.

You want to be engaging the core, sucking everything in. So I'm not just everything's resting when I do this. I'm thinking about lifting up like this in and then you come forwards, push yourself back. Okay, so it's finding everything active again, my forearms also pulling the mat up like there's a ball under my hands and I'm picking it up.

Alright, so think about that. Think about what your wrists are doing. You don't want too much weight over your fingertips because it's going to hurt your wrists and you want to be gripping that mat strong up here, bent arm, knee in strong there and then everything up here is sucking up. Okay, nice and strong and again shoulders are engaged too.

My shoulders aren't just chill. I'm thinking nice and strong, engaged everything and that's going to hold you there. Alright, so let's come back to that squat, lift the hips, bend the elbows, bend the knees. This time think about sending your weight forwards until your weight comes off your feet, lift them up and then back down.

Okay, if you're coming up and you're doing this and pushing yourself back, that's fine. Alright, you're learning the pose and you're learning to get time in. Okay, so let's come back up. This time get to that point where your feet just start to lift, okay, where you feel weightless in the feet.

Now bring them up super slow, then push yourself back. So that is going to feel much harder because you've got a counterweight hanging this side. It's the same as if my head was diving forwards this side, it will pull me over more. Same with my feet.

So if you, it's like when you see a plane take off, they tell you to put the landing gear up. If you don't tuck your landing or taking off gear up like quickly or the longer you take to do it, the more work it is because the more is pulling you this way. So as I come up, as soon as I feel my weight going, I bring my heels to my bum and point my toes instead of back here because it's pulling me back. So bring them up and you can balance much more.

So think about that when you go into the pose as well. So that's this end. What you want to think about this end is a lot of us in Jiu Jitsu are used to rolls and rolling over our heads sometimes as well. We don't want to be thinking if I go too far forwards, I'm going to roll because you'll already be tucking your head and that's sending you that way too.

So if you're really struggling, you can get like a pillow or a yoga block for your forehead here just in case, but don't think of going forwards. You've got these brakes here to stop you going forwards. What you don't have back here is anything stopping you. So that's when you go back and you drop your landing gear again.

Same way as if I stand up, if I come forwards, my toes stop me, but if I go back, it's like I've got my heels here. You don't really have that advantage as much with your hands. It's kind of go back. So just drop your feet.

All right. So let's try that again with a bit more understanding of really pulling the heels up towards the bum and not leaving anything hanging back. All right. We're going to do three.

So let's go up. So lift your hips, bend your arms, bend the knees a bit more, slot the knees on top of the triceps. Let's go forwards. Lift the landing gear, heels to bum, heels to bum, good.

Push your fingertips down to the mat and back. Okay. Let's go one more time. Lift the hips, bend the knees, bend the arms forwards, lift the landing gear.

You don't need it yet. Hopefully. Good. Push the fingertips and down and try and get to the point where you're pushing yourself out of it because that's going to build up strength in your forearms, which is going to help kind of stabilise you in these arm balances.

Okay. Let's go one more hips up, bend, bend and forwards. Lift the landing gear, hips to bum. Good.

If you need to go back, push back. If not hold here. And again, my head, I'm looking just down in front of me. I'm not different.

My head like that because that's going to initiate a roll. Good. Let's come down. Sit on your heels for a second.

Just warm the wrists up or move the wrists round. And if, if you're chasing crow or chasing time in crow, nothing is going to improve that more than just coming forwards into it and then back. All right. Forward into it and back.

So if you're super burnt out, you know, you've cooked everything for holding there. Again, you still got a bit in the tank. So just see if you can just come up and back down, up and back down. And that is going to help you get more time in the pose and kind of learn what's going on there.

Okay. Let's come back up. Good. So we're going to do three more, maybe hold for a bit longer.

I'm going to go for a breath. So nice slow inhale, nice slow exhale. Then at the bottom of the exhale, my fingertips are going to push me out of the pose. I'm not going to fall out of it.

So see if you can join me there. If you need to come out of it before that, again, just use those brakes, pull up the landing gear and come down. So lift the hips, bend the elbows, knees. Let's go.

So let everything out. Okay. Let's come up, lift the landing gear. Inhale, exhale and come down.

Good. Take your breath here. Let's go again. So let's go.

So let's go again. So lifting up, knees to triceps, leaning forwards, lift the landing gear, take an inhale, take an exhale, slowly let the landing gear come out. Good. Take a breath here.

Lift the hips. Last one here. See how you do before you have to come out. So let's come forwards, take a breath.

Point the toes, heels to bum. Maybe take another breath. Okay. Pushing on those fingertips, lower the feet, come down.

Good. Keep your feet out in front of you. Lay yourself down on your back and just lift your hips from here. Hands out by your sides, palms facing up, just lift the hips up.

Good. Take a couple of breaths here. Okay. Drop the hips.

So drop your knees to the left hand side, lift them back up. Drop your knees to the right hand side, lift them back up. Okay. Let's go left.

Back up again. And right. And just go from side to side a few times. Meet me back in the middle with your knees pointing up.

Lift the hips one more time and take two breaths here. Good. Take a breath here. Good.

Drop the hips down. Let's come back up. Okay. Thanks for joining me.

I'm going to do more of these. Let me know if you've got any questions in the pose or leading up to the pose or anything like that and we'll go over that. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.