if you look at the most popular fitness videos we see topics like fat loss building muscle and getting tone but despite what the fitness influencers tell you you can look better and still feel terrible what most of us are actually after is looking good yes but even better feeling good and the results are in animalistic and Primal styles of movement make people's bodies work better they say walk before you run but optimally before you do anything else learn these five fundamental crawling patterns and why we're doing them the cat crawl is the most basic but
arguably the most powerful this crawl teaches you to use reflexive strength and requires the body to move as a unit just like walking we are always shifting weight from side to side and moving the spine to facilitate this movement the basic crawl connects our upper and lower body through the core start on hands and knees and lift your knees to hover just off the ground pick one hand up and reach it Forward while letting the opposite foot move forward trust me your body knows this pattern even if it's not easy right away continue to alternate
arms and legs moving yourself forward allowing the shoulders hips and spine to move how they want from our cat we can transition into what we call bare by simply straightening the knees and lifting the hips upward we love this crawl for stretching the back side of the body including hamstrings and calves nothing changes in the pattern only the body position the ape Traverse is one of the most functional on this list watch someone stand up from sitting or land from stepping off a fallen log and you'll see the ape pattern sometimes it's most efficient to
shift weight from our legs to our arms and shoulders for just a moment so to perform the ape we start low Crouch to the ground we reach our arms in front of us in the direction we want to go and we shift the weight into our upper body we now use that weight shift to pull our legs back behind us start small and get the hang of this weight ship then you can gradually reach further and make the eight more Dynamic by jumping your legs back to your body one of the great things about the
ape is it gets us moving sideways so we start to activate a chain of muscles that can easily become dormant in most of us the crocodile crawl does two very important things for our body first it gets us out of a straight line and moves us from side to side in an exaggerated fashion the second is it asks us to use more Mobility from the hips and the upper spine in order to rotate to each side which can improve your Mobility without actually stretching begin in a low lunge position with one hand down right inside
of your front foot take a snapshot of this position in your mind because to perform the crocodile crawl we just need to get to this same position on the other side we do this by reaching the other arm forward and across our body as your weight shifts forward step your back leg into the next lunge position notice this will rotate your body making your chest face side to side this one can be challenging in the beginning but once you work out how to get to that next low lunge it will become second nature the frog
is not the most functional way to move as human beings but we like it for one main reason upper body strength the Frog develops foundational pushing strength literally built from the ground up if you have a goal of developing a handstand someday the Frog will help you on that journey to perform frogs start in a squat and reach the arms out in front of you and shift your weight into the hands now pull the legs forward with you by taking as much much weight as you can in the upper body much like the ape frog
can also allow you to work on some hip mobility by widening the knees and keeping the spine low you can track your progress by seeing how long you can hover your feet off the ground you can start by just sliding your feet back to meet your body but before you know it you may find you're able to hold your feet off the ground for a couple seconds that's huge progress the crab is important because you press the ground away in the opposite direction behind you this is great to bring balance to the shoulders by placing
them into extensions something that we don't do too much in our daily lives it's also great for the legs to pull rather than push remember the cat crawl the crab is performed in the same way the only difference is your chest will be facing up to the sky move one hand and the opposite leg simultaneously to move you in the direction of your legs the crawl switch can allow you to practice your crawling patterns in a tight space but it's also a lovely movement for the shoulders and links the cat and crab starting your crab
position and shift your weight into one arm now bring that same side leg underneath your body let the other hand reach over the top and rotate you into your cat crawl position now reverse the movement this is one of my favorite movements for shoulder rotation and balance doing it slowly will challenge your functional strength immensely so once you start to feel comfortable with these basic crawls try learning them in Reverse backwards isn't necessarily harder or just used to moving forward all the time and just like the crawl switch is a transition from the cat to
the crab you can play with and get creative with different transitions between these fundamental crawls and in that way you may learn some new movements on your own so how many sets and Reps animal movements are meant to be explorative even though there are some general guidelines there's no right or wrong your style will definitely look different than mine and maybe you'll come up with some calls on your own so we're bigger fans of listening to your body if you're in your backyard for all the distance of your lawn or maybe your hallway or from
One Tree to the next or my favorite is just put on a timer and explore the crawl for 30 to 60 seconds animal movements are great workouts you'll get your heart rate up and you'll work your muscles in new ways but the real juice of these movements is in Longevity if we can keep our relationship to gravity strong for as long as possible then we'll live long and enjoyable lives often we get the question aren't you embarrassed to do these in public sure in the beginning yes but now it seems quite natural and the only
time anyone stops and stares is because they're interested or to say something positive you'd be surprised at how most people are mostly encouraging for others being healthy this may sound dramatic but crawling has changed my life I hope it does the same for you we believe all these basic crawling patterns should be for free but if you're inspired and you want to invest in yourself we have a program called move strong now that combines animal movements body weight strength and mobility and right now we're running a sale for the viewers of this video use code
animal movement get 25 off like this video subscribe to strength side we'll see in the next one as always
