Welcome to Pose Dissection 001: Upgraded Crow

What is “Pose Dissection”?

Pose Dissection is going to “upgrade” poses and transitions you’ve seen or done before, and highlights the subtle points in the poses you might not have noticed to work on. You’ll be able to contribute to this section by sending me poses and transitions you’ve done yourself or seen somewhere else.

Fun Fact: This pose was shot at Beco do Batman (Batman Alley) in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

1. The Hamstrings

It’s easy to overlook the role of the hamstrings in Crow, both the bent arm variation and the straight arm variation. Learn to use your hamstrings similar to how you would use your biceps when you curl something.

The hamstring/quadriceps relationship is similar to the bicep/tricep relationship.

How does engaging your hamstrings this way help?

In this photo that you’re looking at, a large part of being able to balance is determined by how much weight is moving forward without over exaggerating the shift of the shoulders forward. Notice that if my hamstrings weren’t working properly, my calf muscles and shin bones would be lower to the ground. The closer my calves get to the ground the less weight I can bring forward.

2. The Shoulders

Here is something else to think about when you try the straight arm variation.

Don’t over-exaggerate the shift in the shoulders. This also applies to learning how to press to handstand. If you shift forward too much, you’ll just go rocketing to the ground. Forward weight shift is good, but not too much.

Know the position of your shoulders at all times.

3. The Stomach

This is more about entering the pose properly. Always get in the habit of engaging the necessary core muscles before entering a pose.

This is an absolutely critical mistake you will not make after reading this:

When I watch students learn inversions at the wall, they throw themselves up against it without engaging their core muscles at all. You will never learn to balance this way, here’s why:

Balance without a wall requires you to be 99% precise. Kicking up to a wall requires you to be 50% precise. All you have to do is kick hard enough to reach the wall but not worry about kicking too hard and falling over.

And 99% precise is barely good enough. You still run the risk of falling. Really Brian?

That last 1% is what you need to strive for.

Your hands. And not just your hands. Your fingertips. That’s right, your fingertips. Learning to claw the floor is absolutely critical. If you jump and you’re off by 1% your fingertips can save you, if you learn to use them. Reckless jumping at the wall will never train you to engage properly before you jump and never train your fingertips.

Apply this to arm balances. Save your balance with your fingertips. Don’t go down easy.

4. Wrists & Hands

Don’t ignore you wrists and your hands in Crow.

Students get caught up in thinking raw strength is all you need and say things to me like,

“Brian, I got amped up and did 100 pushups today but I still can’t do Crow.”

“Brian, I can do handstand-pushups at the wall, but I can’t balance in Crow.”

I will give these people some credit, probably the most important thing they’re doing when doing pushups of all varieties is training their wrists. But do they even know that?

In Crow, especially, if you’re doing the straight arm variation, protecting your wrists starts with your hands. Don’t allow, under any circumstance, your body weight to collect in the heels of your hands.

But what does that mean for my body when this happens?

Your core muscles must work, at least a little bit. If you’re stuck in the heels of your hands, you’re not using your core enough to bring yourself forward and out of your heels. Also, you’re in a state of collapsing rather than lifting.

Start thinking about how you do Crow. And start thinking in terms of your body. If Crow is difficult for you, stop brute forcing it and figure out which parts of your body are not working optimally.

Start working on it now, get the sequence to upgrade your Crow here.