The Benefits of Crawling

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I've been fascinated with the bear crawl for the past few months. I can't say how beneficial it has been for my training. I've had some nagging injuries come back trying out a new sport, rugby. I knew I couldn't be injured and continue to play. So I stopped for the summer and put time into crawling. I had no clue how beneficial it would turn out to be. I played in a couple back to back games without any issues. My recover time was less than 24 hours.

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The idea of crawling is nothing new. Heck, Devon Levesque bear crawled a marathon to honor veterans in 2020. I've dabbled in it before to improve my training, but never with the focus on animal locomotion for rehab/prehab. It was never with the intent to understand why crawling is so beneficial, only sets and reps in the past.

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The crawl is tough because its a perfect core to extremity movement. Your entire core has to be engaged to move. If you are having a hard time with the movement you might hold your breath. So start paying attention to your breath before you take your first step. . You will be able to stay calm longer allowing more time under tension. This is when we REBUiLD our joints and tendons.

Text neck is a huge issue. Few people do anything about it. Lifting the head up while we crawl helps remove neck pain and fix our posture to one more efficient for our body. So as you crawl constantly say "Head up and Breathe" to let your body move and mind stay calm.

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Now I'm not saying this is the only thing you should do, but going back to our movements we performed as children and learning how to play is a big step and fun way to up your training. Watch the Youtube video above for more info.

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"There are no bad movements, just more efficient ones."

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