One-Legged Crow Tutorial: 13-Min Arm Balance for BJJ

Just look after your wrists. Okay, now back of your left hand, but have your fingers pointing towards your left hand. Good. Make a fist with your right hand.

Okay. Try and keep your arm nice and straight. Now bend your arm, keep that fist and straighten your arm. Good.

Back down, keep that fist, straighten your arm. Okay, now my left hand, as I bend, I'm going to keep that fist, then I'm going to try and straighten my arm. You feel that nice and tight down the back of the forearm, back of the hand. Good.

Bend, straighten, bend and straighten. Two more. Good. Okay, now same with the left, so back of the left hand, fingers pointing towards the right.

Okay, make a fist, bend and straighten. Good. A few of them. Now grab the hand, keep that fist, bend, straighten.

Let's do five. Bend, straighten, bend, straighten. Last one. Good.

Okay, we'll do some quick cat-cows as well. So looking up, tilting the hips away, and then lift the back. Look up, tilting the hips away. Look down to the hips, tilting the hips to the forehead.

A few more. Good. Okay, so if you're feeling warm from hopefully doing a class before this, then let's crack on. If not, try and do a class before this or try and do something to warm up.

You don't just want to go into arm balance, it's cold. Okay, we've done a bit of wrists, but try and do maybe a five, 10 minute yoga flow, one of my warm up videos or something, just to get you prepared for these. Okay, so make sure you're ready for this. Okay, so we're going to do a couple of exercises.

We're going to do a couple of exercises, and then we're going to do a couple of exercises. We're going to get you prepared for these. Okay, so normal crow, if you've done the tutorials before, hopefully you have. Obviously, we're coming up this way with one arm crow, or one legged crow, sorry.

We have one leg out behind us, and we need to work on our balance a little more. Okay, there's a couple of entries for this, but the easiest one I find is just coming forward with one knee in that pocket that you'd use or that shelf that you'd use on your tricep, and then one leg's going to kick out behind, and you're going to be nice and strong and balanced there, hopefully. Maybe not so much the first few times, but you'll get there. So it's this same position here, and I'm pointing my foot, that goes in here, okay, and then as we come forwards, the back leg, as I said, is going to lift up in the air, and the best way to set up for it is by having that leg trailing back already.

So it's kind of hanging back, how I've talked about in crow before, how if we come up and our feet are dangling, it's hard. It's going to feel similar if the foot's dangling here, and then we're going to activate our glutes and lift that foot up nice and strong behind us, okay? So let's get the elbow just at the bottom of the tricep above the elbow, and it's almost like my other leg is in a dog position, so if I was in down dog here, I'm then going to bend my knee, bring my knee to my elbow, then I'm leaning my weight forward, same way with crow, I'm going to point my toes with the left foot, then lift that up, kicking up there, and then lower back down, good. Back into dog, take a couple of breaths, good, let's try with the other side, so same thing, knee above the elbow, bend, make that shelf, then lean forward, point the back foot, lift it up, and back down, good.

Back to dog, come down to your knees, breathe, okay. So we're thinking about that same thing coming forward, so it's the same as crow, so for crow, I come up and I come forward, and lift, it's the same, apart from as I come forward, that leg behind me comes up, okay, so it's very similar, we've just got a lot more hanging back this way than we do this way, so it's going to be tougher, and obviously we've not got two things balancing here, we've got one, so we're at a bit of an angle, and we've got leverage against us, so the more you think about coming forwards, the easier it's going to be to lift that trailing leg behind you, okay, so now that we've had a rest, sitting on your heels, okay, let's come back up into that dog, good, and now think about right knee to right elbow, or above the right elbow, but I'm going to say right elbow, okay, and now can you see I'm already forwards, I'm not here, all my weight is in my back foot if I'm back here, so I really need to come forwards the same way you would with normal crow, so at the moment my head is above the line of my wrists, for my weight to come off this foot, I need my head almost to the end of my mat here, okay, I know I'm quite tall and lanky, but it's probably a good thing because I have to exaggerate that forward movement even more, okay, so dog, knee to elbow, think about coming forwards already, good, now I'm on my tiptoes, so watch the back foot, that comes up, tiptoes, and then I can just lift that up, point in the foot, come back down, then my weight goes back, into dog, good, let's come forwards, so left knee, to left elbow, just above, now my head is over the end of my mat, point my foot, lift up, and back down, good, back to dog, drop to your knees, drop to your heels, so if you're finding it hard to lift that back foot, it's because you need your weight to come forwards more, okay, it's not press up higher, it's just bringing this weight forwards here so that my feet or my foot can come up, okay, so think about dog, I'm back here, okay, and then plank, I'm over here, we want to be a little further forward there, okay, you see my feet, so I'm back here, all my weight is in my feet, I'm here, got less weight in my feet, more weight in my wrist, and I'm lighter here, we're just doing this motion, but with one knee in, okay, so a good way of kind of feeling that balance point is, if you've got a yoga mat, kind of find that point where you're over it in plank, okay, and look straight down, you should have that line under you, or maybe you've got, you know, if you get your jujitsu belt and put it in a line just across, like maybe a hands width above, it's going to be different for everyone, but if you get in a nice plank with your shoulders over your wrists, then you'll be able to see that point, you're nearly there, and then think about coming forwards like this, so I'm on the tops of my toes there, now I'm at the point where my weight would come off, okay, so now, set your line just under your kind of line of sight when you're in plank, and that's what we're trying to travel over, alright, so we'll go again with that one-legged crow, alright, we'll start with the right side, that's strongest for me, it's probably going to be strongest for most, and then we'll go to that left side, obviously practice both, just so you're kind of a bit more like all-rounded, I've got sides I can do arm balances for longer, for on one side than the other, definitely, but try and practice both sides, I know we don't do that enough in jiu-jitsu, but that's why we need to do it in our yoga practice, because we're stronger one side with a lot of things, I'll knee cut past one way, then I've got a completely different game the other way, okay, but try and not do that with your yoga, because we're doing this to be all round, okay, good, so let's come up to dog, now think about that right knee is coming towards the elbow, good, now I'm at that point where I would be for plank, and I want to go further forward so my weight gets heavier on my knee as well, then I lift that foot back, maybe hold for a bit longer this time, now that foot comes down, then the weight goes back into it, step back to dog, take a breath, okay, left knee now, so I can move forward with that left knee, now my weight is still in that back foot, I need to bring my weight forward, top of my foot is in the mat, I need to bend my elbow more there, I messed up there, so that knee comes in onto that shelf, then I lift that back foot, breathe, and back down, good, back to dog, let the head hang, come down to your knees, and sit yourself on your heels, okay, so I suggest you work on getting in and out just like the previous crow class of these short ones, because it's going to really help you learn your balance point, and then each time you get in you might go for half a breath more, or a full breath more, and then you can keep progressing, okay, there's other transitions we can do in and out, but this is the easiest one that I've found because it's really teaching you of getting forwards and then onto the top of your feet to get that balance point where it needs to be to then lift that foot up, whereas the other transitions are a little less forgiving, so this is the easiest way to get in and out, and then as you progress, as your practice improves, you'll be like cool I can play with it from crow kicking that leg back and then back in, and then that's a completely different story, but I hope you enjoyed the video, if you've got any questions on this pose, ask them underneath, I'll get back to you, maybe I might need to do another video or two to really point out some cues, but make sure you do a cool down class now or something just to cool down a little bit, keep playing with some arm balances, maybe restart this where we started going over this position, I'll put the little time stamp just at the bottom of the video so that you know where to get back to, but just do it a few more times, and just have fun with it, and yeah, enjoy, and I'll see you in the next video.