 Welcome back to the Schoolcast. It's Jaco here, and I'm here with Sarah once again from HotPod. We managed to make it our way back, and we're going to go. We're looking at a bit of a hot topic sometimes on our thread around the frog stand versus crow stand argument. We're going to look at a few headstands as well. If you haven't subscribed, make sure you click below. And if you haven't been to HotPod Yoga, the link for them is in the description below. So make sure you have a look at that before we get into this tutorial. If you haven't warmed up or seen the video that we've done, the previous one, make sure you check that out, which was, we were looking at shoulder mobility and wrist mobility as well as some exercises to help warm us up. We've obviously done those, so we're ready to go, but check them on out if you haven't done yet. But we're going to go now into this difference and look at the similarity and difference between what we would in Calisthenics School, a frog stand and what in yoga you call a crow stand. So for me, I'm going to show you side on. I'm going to show you frog stand first where I'm going to go up onto my toes. My shoulders are going to be, my hands are going to be shoulder width apart and I'm gripping tight with my fingers and I'm spreading those fingers. So fingertips are gripping the floor and the base of my palm is also on the floor. I'm then going to put the, I've got two options that I like to give. I can put my elbow into the crease or here, the elbow into the crease of my knee there, which means that I stay nice and low on the floor as I pivot forward and keep pushing down hard into the floor. I'm just going to gradually try and take my toes off the ground until I'm actually just balancing purely on my hands. I'm nice and low to the ground. It's a little less scary. It's a nice stable position. My knees are resting, my lower body is actually resting on the elbow and because I'm making use of that crease, it's just sat in there nicely on the elbow. A little progression that we would do for a frog stand is taking those knees and putting them a little bit higher and it's probably going to start to get a little bit more looking like your crow. But when I put them on top of the elbow on my tricep, there's the chance that it can slip off so it's a little bit, it's a bit more challenging in terms of stability but strength wise it's exactly the same. But the thing that's nice with that is my hip position is now a lot higher, which is a little bit potentially scary for some people if they're new to this. But with that hip being higher, it allows me and I want to come up and get into this handstand position. I'm starting from a higher hip position than I would have been if I was starting in that really low position. So what we're doing within Calisthenics, we're building that frog stand as a base for that handstand. And if my hips are, if I'm right down here, that's a long way for me to go and take my knees off and try and get my hips around. So starting with those hips a little bit higher for us is once we're comfortable, it's nice for that rotation round and into that handstand. It's funny because when we get people who are pretty strong into class, they'll go straight into what we would call crow. But it is very much as you demonstrated there, which is almost using, how much core are you using there? Because it felt like it was brute strength. Yeah, a lot of shoulders. A lot of shoulder strength. So I guess the first big difference for us is that we're much more into the core and much more into the hip mobility. Okay, so we start a little deeper. So immediately we can see if you're tight. So one thing you would say that where we started, where I said starting with those elbows going in that crease, that knee like, and I'm on my toes, that hip mobility requirement is nothing compared to that. So you should definitely work on this hip mobility. But if you're starting, then you can see where we can use, we like to say rather than being right and wrong, it's like using a regression or a progression that's suitable for you at the time. And then you can build up to where you want to go to. Absolutely, I'll go with you. And we're big into functional alignment meaning that you're not again trying to recreate this picture perfect pose just because you have people doing stuff like this around you. It's much more about feeling your way into it. And you know, if you're feeling a pinch in the hip right now, it doesn't matter how much yoga you're going to do. That's never going to change. Yeah, if you've got some anterior hip and pinching. Absolutely, in which case we're sort of giving suggestions about keeping the heels a little bit off and taking the knees a little bit lower. Maybe even taking full progression, just sort of working on that hip space. I'm actually going to see in a physio or a doctor. That's something that people don't seem to think. Yeah, for sure. So I would start and normally my instruction would be to just have the back of the shoulder here tucked in nicely towards the inner knee. So my elbows are pretty free. And my weight bearing is going to be here and lifted up through the hip, through the core. So my hands, I have wide shoulders, so they're quite wide. But again, you have a little place in here. And again, the hands have to be active. Very often we get feedback from people that the wrists are hurting. And I think it's probably because we're just going brute force and we're not pushing away and being active through a hole of the arm as well. So we would teach this that we start to look a little forward if the head drops were a bit sunk. And I just start to come high on my tiptoes. And again, it's like someone's looping me up from the back of my waistband. As I just take that very, very natural tip forward, pushing the floor away through my hands, core engaged, and just taking it up to my grog. So it's much more about how we pull up into the core, we round in just like we did on that warm up with you. From the plank, rounding into the shoulders and pushing the floor away. And doing it feels like a much lighter pose than when I saw your first. We couldn't necessarily get into a stand from that. Yeah, so I think it's where we're coming from is I'm trying to use it to build up the anterior part of my shoulder so that I can actually press out and do handstand press ups and make my shoulders sort of strong as opposed to just the, I guess, the purpose of the pose. But there was definitely similarities in terms of hand position was, I'm going to have a go at one. So hand position was the same as in shoulder width, finger spread, you were... To pulling up from the hips. Yeah, pulling up. So it's like literally you're not leaping. Look forward a bit, look forward a bit. Point the toes, heels to bum. Perfect. We've still got now like a relatively straight or vertical forearm. Yeah, and there's a rounding into the back. Yeah. And my hips stacked on top of my elbows and my wrist. That would be taking it into a different posture if you were doing that through yoga. But yes, it's for sure. We're starting to try, one of the principles like we would talk about is starting to try and stack like one thing on top of the other, which eventually in that handstand, that's where we're trying to get to. It's giving us the chance to do that. Yeah, 100%. Great. So I think not too different in the end with that high position. A lot of it's semantics. And again, as we said, it's how the body works. So it might be that the head might be telling you you're doing one or the other, but your body is doing something different. You're still reaching kind of them. I think in summary a little bit more finesse from Sarah and a little bit more brute strength from me. But we're getting into the same point at the end. So taking that principle of stacking one thing on top of the other, we're going to take this frog stand and try and take it into a headstand or through a transition of a tripod and then into a headstand and just look at some variations that you can use, some progressions and regressions to make it applicable so that you can get the most out of it for yourself. So I was going to demonstrate first how we would go, try and go and get some control, and we're even going to try and do with a little bit finesse rather than just brute strength, but I'm going to go into my higher frog stand position and then I'm going to try and take my head down and I'm not going to put it between my hands and on a straight line. I'm going to try and put it in front to make a triangle, which gives me a nice base of support which is going to help me with my balance. So I'll make the balance aspect much easier when I'm going to work then on my trunk alignment. So I'm going to take that head down and then from there, I'm not going to just rely on my head. I want to still be actively, if you can see that, actively pushing down with my hands. Try and use your head as least as possible. Then I'm going to take those knees off and come up onto almost this like chair sort of position upside down before I then under control slowly one bit at a time, trying to get to a nice straight position, getting bum on, locking core down so I can start to then work on that trunk alignment whilst I'm in that position. The strength that can come down, I could dab the toes on the floor, push down hard with the hands and then work back up. I can start to get some reps going of those. Actually, if you're not just resting on your head and you're pushing down there, when you start to come down and come back up, you're going to start to work on some of that strength that you might feel you need to build on when you're in your frog stand positions if that's where you feel that you're lacking. That can be a great one for helps build up some of that strength as long as you're active with that. Then it's giving us the chance to feel what that hip rotation is like, stack those hips on top of the shoulders and then start to straighten those legs and start to stack the legs on top of the hips which are on top of the shoulders, but you then don't have to worry about the balance because you've got hands and your head making a nice triangle which gives you a nice stable basis port. I'm not out of breath. I've certainly only done two reps and Sarah's going to give us an example of how difficult to get into it from that tilting from that frog stand in a nice way that they would go through in some of their classes and how to get into this. I thought it was a great example. We tried to teach them how to learn your frog slash crow and then we'd take the tripod headstand as a separate entity and then it's like a more of a progression to build it. To link them together if you can. Do you even know where to put the weight on your head? Here. Neck brace central. If you've never done this before. That's a good point. This is going to look stupid, right? Just roll with me on this. Babies. I've got a mamba now. It looks stupid already. No, wait, okay. The way you find it is thumbs into ears. Pretty well where this... Yeah, thank you. Second and third finger land. If you just bring them back so that they meet each other and spot that we're aiming to be on. I think sometimes there's a real... Yeah, sorry, yeah. I'm not putting... I'm not going to her point of view. I'm not going to her point of view. Sometimes I think one of the fear... I wish you could see what our cameraman was doing. I wish you could see what our cameraman was doing. I think sometimes the fear when you're first going into headstand if you haven't done it since the playground or whatever. Or never in a playground because you're playing football. Yeah, for sure. I think one of the other feedbacks we get hugely is like wow, that really hurts. It doesn't hurt. I think it's just if you're not used to it. It's just a bit of getting used to it. One of the things on it though is that you only rely on your head and expecting the hands aren't doing anything. I see people make the mistake where an example of that is the resting on the head and they get a bit like panicking and they move their arms. There's no where I can move my hands there because I'm pushing down with them. If you can move your hands it means you're resting on your head. Massively important. And again, another opportunity to see my legendary triceps in action. Yes. I'm going to start here. I've already identified where I'm putting the pressure with the pressure connection with the ground down. Contact point. My hands come down here again. I still have broad shoulders just like last time and I'm going to move my knees in because sometimes even this act of just looping forward can feel a little like world on the nose part. Or you could even start with them closer and put them again just like you said with the triangle. So you can see that nicely on here with that side angle. That head is now making a nice triangle with those hands. That's a stable base. Absolutely. So right now floppy arms are doing nothing. Take them to the extreme. I'm going to get my hands into place. And you bangle out of the way. And now I'm going to start working with those hands. A little bit of triceps on show. So just something we mentioned that forearm being nice and virtual start working on that stacked position straight away. Absolutely. The first thing I'm going to do here is just come up under my tiptoes again like someone is looping me up from behind. I'm pushing the floor away and just re-adjusting slightly there. It's a little bit like the dolphin in the previous video from the warmer. Yeah, absolutely. So far there is not a health chance that my legs are going to ever leave the floor here because look where my hips are in relation to my shoulders. So I start to just engage the core. So we see that. Now look at the hip bone being stacked on top of the shoulder which is on top of the hand. So this would be our yoga pose. This would be our triangle of hips. Love it. Love that alignment. Love that alignment. Keep active. And it's like I'm trying to lengthen myself. Get those toes closer to the top of the part I'm not hanging out. I'm going to just sit back. Nice. And in yoga we always make you stay at least 30 seconds down here because just keep the head real low below the heart rest it out. Let everything normalise, breathe and just really enjoy the space. It can be quite a nice and really spacious. It's a nice place to relax. That's an important thing that gets missed a little bit rest wise with some people getting a little confused sometimes within calisthenics training where we might be trying to do something that you've never done a headstand before. It's super maximal. It's like you've never done it before. If I gave an equivalent of you were trying to do a 100kg deadlift in the gym and you couldn't do 100kg yet, you wouldn't have a go, fail them, wait 5-10 seconds and have another go. Whereas we don't sometimes apply that, understand how important the rest can be between reps or sets or attempts however you want to call it. If we are doing stuff that we're trying to redefine our own possible and it's something we've never done before then making sure you are having adequate rest is important in between some of those attempts. That's something that a common question we get coming through. Great. So hopefully you've seen that as started to help you with your initial base of your hand balancing building up a little bit of strength whether it's skill in some of those crow or frog stands, however you want to attack that and then taking that and looking at some of our how we stack, taking those principles of stacking one thing on top of the other as in the frog, but taking it and looking at our trunk and body alignment in that headstand but not having to worry about the balance because you've created that nice stable base with the triangle, with the hands and the heads. So I hope that's helped you. If you've got any questions make sure you comment in the box below. If you haven't been or seen or checked out HotPod you'd like to see a little bit more of what that's about a link to their website is in the description below. If you haven't subscribed make sure you click up there so you don't miss out on any of our other content. If you wanted to get started in Calisthen so we've got a free beginners guide which is just down there you can get that for free from our website and then if you didn't actually see last video with that we did with Sarah in HotPod that's up there which was looking at shoulder mobility and warm up. Until next week, class dismissed.