 Hey guys, welcome to School of Calisthenics. I'm Georgie and I'm going to take you through the frog stand ladder. So this is a series of different variations of frog stand and it's going to progressively get harder as you go on. The most important thing that I want you to think about is one, make sure that you warm up properly. For most of the balancing you're going to need to make sure the wrists are super super warm and then as well for the majority of the pose it's going to require openness in the hips, rotation through the trunk of your body and then great to get into the hamstrings as well. So warm up properly before attempting any of these. Also really important just to remember if it feels good it is good, if it feels bad it's bad. So listen to your body and just take things at the right pace for you. So let's see how far up the ladder you can get and we'll get started with the first one now. Okay so the first one we're going to do is just your normal frog stand or crow. I'm just going to set my hands up and I'm going to think about gripping the floor. So when I go into crow I need to think about creating tension between the hand and the floor so not letting the hand spin out. So grip with the fingers, get the knees into the tops of the arms and then from there I'm just thinking about drawing the feet up off the floor. Controlling a lot of this through the hands and I'm also not just dumping my weight down into the arms I'm pressing down hard into the floor. Okay so the next one is really similar but this is now with straight arms so I'm going to set up exactly the same. Grip, control my body through the fingers, pull the feet up and now I'm going to start to press and extend the arms. I've got to think about the hips going high and pulling my heels to my bum and that is your straight arm frog. Okay so this next one is frog stand with a bit of a twist so I'm going to take both my arms over to one side. I want to create a shelf with the backs of my arms so this back arm is coming in towards the back hip and the front elbow in front of this knee. From there all I'm doing is rocking my weight over onto the shelf and bringing my feet up. Same pose, slightly different variation, a little bit harder, take both arms away. So I'm now not supporting that back hip with my back elbow as much. Try them both, feel the difference. Okay so this next variation I'm going to look at extending my legs so I take the arms over to both sides to one side and then I'm just going to support my hips on my arms, create the shelf. Now from there I'm going to extend the bottom leg forward and the top leg up. Important point is to not sink this shoulder into the floor so actively push down into the ground just like you would for your frog stand. Okay this next one we're going to go into a flying lizard so I'm going to set up into a lunge position and take both hands inside my front foot and then first of all it's just opening up into the hips a little bit more maybe then just having a go at getting the elbows down to the floor. You can also do this with the back knee down. From here I'm just going to take my foot inside my hand so I can be my hand outside the foot, shuffle the foot in, come on to the toes. I'm going into my frog stand balance and then lifting the back leg up. In all of these poses always just slightly looking forwards. If you're looking down at the floor you're more likely going to end up on the floor. Okay similar to the last one I'm going to come into a lunge position take both my hands inside the front foot but this time before going into it I'm also going to check in with the hamstrings because it requires quite a lot of hamstring flexibility as well. So you can do this pose whether or not you've got length in the back of the leg so you just need to bend the knee so don't force it extended. So once I've gone into the hips and the hamstrings just a little bit I'm going to take the shoulder under the thigh or close to the back of the knee behind the calf and then from here I'm lifting the front leg off the floor reaching it forward as I look forwards and lifting the back leg up again looking forwards not down so that I don't fall on my face. Okay so next one's called eight angle pose. I'm going to start with one leg extended out in front pull the other heel in towards me and then from here I'm going to try and get the back of this knee as high onto the shoulder as possible or anywhere above the elbow but the higher you are better. So I'm going to take the leg over the back of the arm as high as I can place this hand straight back down on the ground kind of lock it in place. So you can also try and resist the back of the shoulder against the leg to try and keep it there take the other hand onto the floor same setup that you'd use for your frog stand. Cross the ankles and then all I'm going to do is almost like head butt forward but just transition the weight forward into that frog stand and extend the legs out again looking forward I'm not dumping the weight down I'm pushing up and keeping that tension between the hands and the floor. Okay for this next one which we're going to do flying pigeon we need to make sure that we're fairly open in the hips so just make sure you've warmed up really well before trying this. Have a go to begin we'll just bring the ankle just above the knee and flex the foot and then bend your bottom leg and just see how that feels we get a nice stretch in the outer hips begin with anyway. So from the side once I've set up I'm just going to start to bend the bottom leg reach the hands forward like I'm going to go into my frog stand and hook this foot on the back of my tricep push the foot into the back of the arm and push the arms against the foot I'm going to then lift the back leg up as high as I can. What you'll find in this one is if you're not getting the hips up enough and there's not enough tension between the back of the foot and the arm your hips will sink low and the leg will go straight back rather than up so instead it'll look more like this so we need to create tension push up push through that foot that's on the back of my tricep to get the leg up nice and high and then just always with these ones go in and out of these poses really really gently so the next one we're going to do is called dragonfly and it's a really similar way setting up to come into dragonfly as it was for flying pigeon so to begin with I take the foot just on top of the other thigh and then bend down all the way to the floor really important in these ones especially because when we want the hips to be open but also make sure there's nothing funky going on in your knees you don't want to feel any sort of twisting or any discomfort the next thing we want to do is rotate the body as far as we can across and I want to take this foot above the elbow as high as I can so the foot sits above the elbow from there I set my hands up into my frog stand shape lift the hip and then extend this leg out I'm going to look towards my extended leg and then come back out just carefully release the leg and come outside okay guys so this is the last one and this is called firefly it requires a fairly decent amount of flexibility in the hamstrings so please be careful when doing it and again you can also do this one with your legs bent so you don't have to extend the legs we're going to start by thinking about getting the shoulder behind the knee so you kind of have to fold yourself up into a bit of a pretzel once you've got your shoulders behind the knees we're taking their hands down similar set up to frog I'm then going to lift my eyes up and extend the legs I'm pushing the floor away rounding out through the back pushing up looking forwards bent leg variation just draw the legs in rather than extending them I can also have a go at the legs reaching forwards but just a bit lower so different different variations of firefly so I hope you enjoyed the different variations of frog stand let us know how far along the frog stand ladder you managed to get if you're looking to get stronger and more mobile then make sure that you check out the virtual classroom at school of calisthenics.com make sure you tag us in any of the progressions we'd love to see how far and how well you do with the different variations that's it for now class dismissed