Why Your Elbows Splay Out in Arm Balances & Inversions
"Keep your elbows in!!" Your teacher shouts at you for the fifth time in class. You signed up to learn Crow pose, but you're starting to question whether you accidentally wandered into Army Bootcamp instead.
"Keep your elbows in!!" Geeeez, elbows in! Got it! You set up for the pose, hug the elbows in, shift your weight forward, make sure the elbows are still hugging in, lift one foot, do a little more elbow hugging for good measure, and for one glorious second you feel like an upside-down Kate Winslet at the bow of the Titanic...
"KEEP YOUR ELBOWS INNNN!!" Your teacher's so very lovely, calm voice rings in your ears...and then your elbows shoot out to the sides anyway, your knees slide off your arms, and you nose-dive straight into the floor.
WHAT THE ACTUAL F*CK?! I swear I was hugging the elbows in!!
So you get back up (hoping the teacher didn't see) and try again. This time, you really concentrate on keeping those elbows in. In your head, you're squeezing imaginary lemons with your armpits and doing absolutely everything the teacher told you to do.
But your elbows still have other plans. They've packed their bags and are heading off to Wide Apart Land (not to be confused with Disneyland), which is incredibly annoying because you're convinced you were doing exactly what you were told.
Before you start telling yourself, "I can't do Crow pose. I'm just not strong enough to keep my elbows hugging in!" I want you to board the anatomy bus and come on a journey with me to your shoulder joint.
Why do your elbows keep doing that?
Let's forget about Crow for a second and look at what's really happening with your elbows.
Your elbow is a hinge joint, which (in very broad terms) means it opens and closes. It doesn't bend in infinite directions, so the good news is your elbow can't just randomly decide, "You know what? I fancy pointing sideways today."
So what does influence where your elbow points? Your shoulder!
More specifically, the rotation of your upper arm inside your shoulder socket. Your upper arm bone can rotate inward or outward, and that changes the direction your elbow travels when you bend it.
Let's stop the science bus for a minute and do an experiment.
Come onto your hands and knees (tabletop), or take a plank if you're feeling spicy. Without changing anything, take a peek at the inner creases of your elbows. Where are they pointing?
- Now, without moving your hands, see if you can spin your upper arms in the shoulder sockets so the elbow eyes turn toward each other.
Hello, fellow elbow joint!
From here, bend your elbows and pay attention to where they go. Backward? Sideways? Forward? (Just kidding. If that happens, you may want to go see an orthopedic surgeon.) - Now rotate your upper arms the other way so the eyes of your elbows face more toward the front of your mat. Slowly bend your elbows again and notice what happens this time.
Where do your elbows point?
Spoiler alert (that you can read while recovering from plank): when your upper arms are internally rotated, with the eyes of your elbows winking at each other, your elbows want to travel out to the sides.
When your upper arms are externally rotated, your elbows have a much clearer path to travel backwards.
So which do we want for arm balances?
External rotation, yes! Ten points to Gryffindor!
OK, now let's take this whole elbow-eye situation into Crow.
...because otherwise I've just made you do plank for absolutely no reason.
STEP 1: The Setup
Set up your Crow as usual, but before you put your knees on your arms, pause for a second. Press your hands into the floor and find that same external rotation through your upper arms that you just played with.
Remember what happened in the experiment. When you externally rotated your upper arms, your elbows had a much happier time traveling backwards when you bent them. That's what we're looking for here.
STEP 2: The Lean
So keep that rotation as you bring your knees onto your arms and start to lean forward.
STEP 3: The Bend & Watch
Slowly bend your elbows and actually watch what happens.
→ Are they traveling backwards like you want them to?
→ Are they immediately packing their bags and heading for Wide Apart Land again?
STEP 4: If The Elbows Splay Out...
If they start splaying, don't just go, "ELBOWS IN! ELBOWS IN! ELBOWS IN!" and squeeze the absolute crap out of them. That's basically just repeating the same instruction and hoping your body suddenly understands it on the fourth attempt.
Instead, back up for a second.
→ Check your upper arms.
→ What are your elbow eyes doing?
→ Can you find that external rotation again and then bend the elbows?
You might be surprised by how much easier it is to influence where your elbows go when you stop trying to physically drag the elbows in and instead change what's happening further up the arm.
And this is why I hate cues like "keep your elbows in" when they're given without any explanation.
They're not necessarily wrong. They're just telling you what the finished product should look like without explaining how the hell you're supposed to get there.
Of course, this isn't the magic Crow button. Your hands, shoulders, center of gravity, leg position, strength and a whole bunch of other things are involved in whether you fly or faceplant. We're just looking at one little piece of the puzzle here.
But the next time your elbows start making a break for the edges of your mat, instead of squeezing harder and hoping for the best, go back to your upper arms.
- Check the elbow eyes.
- Play with the rotation.
- See what happens.
And if you're reading this thinking, "OK, I desperately need someone to explain more of this shit to me," that's exactly what we're doing on October 10th, 2026.
We're hosting a FREE 3-hour live training on arm balances and inversions, where we'll break down the mechanics behind these shapes and, importantly, you'll have a chance to get live coaching so you can actually start applying what you're learning to your own body.
No more collecting random cues like "keep your elbows in," "squeeze your armpits," and whatever other mysterious instruction gets shouted across the yoga room. We're going to look at what's actually happening, why it's happening, and what you can change.
Basically, we're taking the whole "keep your elbows in and hope for the best" approach and throwing it directly out the window.
Come join us for the FREE live arm balance + inversion training on October 10th, 2026.
Already inside Yogi Flight School? You have this kind of mechanics-based training inside YFS, so no need to sign up again. Go put those lessons to work.
Because sometimes the most useful cue isn't the one that tells you what to do. It's the one that finally explains why the hell you're doing it.
Want to see exactly what I mean? Here's the short:
