Crawling - its the first thing we learn to do as. a child as we start exploring moving about and getting ourselves familiar with our body. It’s fundamentally a basic movement pattern and something that we develop from an early age. And yet, so many of us squirm at the thought of having to get down on hands and knees and move about. It’s like we have stepped past the point of being feeble on the floor and turn an undignified nose up in the air at the idea of being a quadraped again. Well folks, time to re-think that perspective. If you are into moving and keeping yourself supple and aligned, flexible and strong, then crawling is one of the best things you can do for yourself. And heres’ why…
Put this picture into your imaging. A navy seal roughing through an obstacle course with a 20kg pack on the back and a rifle slung across the front of the torso. The obstacle course has high walls, mud baths, tyre tracks to skip through and barbed wire fences that you have to CRAWL under. That’s because crawling is a basic movement that we should keep in our repertoire. Getting low and go, go, go is a movement pattern that requires great brain cognition and co-ordination and is a skill of being able to transfer power generated from the hips and legs into the upper body and into a movement. It’s fundamental. And it should be part of our daily routine.
My movement regime involves a lot of crawling in the warm up. Things such as Bear Crawls, Emu Walks, Goannas and Sideways Monkeys - yes it does sound like a trip to the zoo but when you go to do these movements, all of a sudden you can feel your body waking up and beginning to have a whole realm of co-ordinated awakening. It gets ALL of the major joint spaces moving and the fact that it gets you bracing through your entire body, transferring weight from the legs into the shoulders, activating fundamental postural and core musculature as well as preparing your brain for locomotive work and neural adaption is the reason why there is so much to gain from crawling.
Co-ordinated movement between lower and upper support chains. “Crawling teaches our shoulders and our hips how to work together in a coordinated fashion” - Tim Anderson (Strength and Corrective Exercise coach) This fundamental movement pattern is vital in so many of our daily movements and often we have issues with this co-ordination in walking and a biped motion. The fascial lines creating tension and ineffective movement patterns brought about by bad habits, posture and mechanics. Crawling helps to re-establish this fundamental co-ordination and important motor skill. Transferring force from the lower chain, contralaterally through the torso into motion ability in the upper body is vital for all movements and how we interact with teh world on a daily basis.
Left and right hemisphere cross communication - much like juggling. It gets the brain neurons firing and opening cross hemisphere communication which is great for dexterity of motion and movement. It get both sides of the body working together in a cohesive way that establishes excellent movement capability for not just when you are trying to perfect a movement but perhaps more importantly for when you require reflexive strength. The ability to be able to adapt quickly to stimuli, such as an obstacle hurtling towards you with speed (think car impact scenario) or a tennis player defending at the net.
The other benefit is the activation of mental systems such as the vestibular system that is in charge of balance along with proprioception, our awareness of where we are in space. These systems are activated and developed with crawling and can be of great benefit for when we need to be negotiating the space in which we operate or as mentioned, when we need to respond to stimuli around us. Particularly beneficial in a sporting sense but also later in life when we need to be more concerned with mobility and dexterity and negotiating the space as a more senior mover. Being able to anticipate movement before it happens and then adapt to it has a direct relation to how we can prevent falls that may impact our body, preventing those injuries that can have direct relation to our morbidity.
Cross rotational locomotion builds lateral strength and the ability to transfer power from the lower body chain to the upper body. This is the foundation of our walking steps - our gait. The ability to transfer power across from one side of the body to the other is a fundamental part of keeping our balance and keeping our motion efficient. Crawling develops this co-ordination and there is even evidence to suggest that the muscles in our arms, legs and torso can be neurally connected via sensory organs in our hands and feet. Crawling helps to keep these connections alive and open and keeping us aware of how we can best negotiate movement and be solid and stable in motion. Not only this but crawling helps to develop the arches of the hand that we use for gripping and specific finger movements. The weight being transmitted through our extended wrists helps to maintain the palmar arch and this has big implications for the development and maintenance of our hands grasping ability.
From the early ages when we start crawling, this is important for infants to begin to develop the three main curvatures of the spinal column. The head lifts and activates the convex cervical curve and likewise the rib cage being suspended downward, helps to establish the same curve in our lumbar spine. resets the spinal column. With this in mind there is much support for mimicking crawling and infant motions to reset and re-establish spinal, hip and shoulder engagement in adults. Crawling requires the shoulders and in particularly the scapula to support weight and move in a specific fashion (ideally downward rotation of the scapula whilst weight bearing). For those sitting at desks and being on devices in a forward protracted position, this is a wonderful re-establishment of the proper movement pattern of the scapula. Add to that the weight bearing elements and you have an simplistic understanding of how this can help with shoulder stability.
The hips don’t lie either. And crawling requires the hips to mobilise and move in many directions, not just forward and back. It has to rotate, drop and extend on angles and all with a little bit of weight bearing. In this way, this directly relates to mobility in the hip that leads to mobility in the lower back and lumbar spine. In this way you can be giving your spinal column a little bit of a reset with some gentle mobility - particulary if you sit all day or have a dormant lifestyle.
The stability required of the hips as you generate forward motion from the legs, working across the core muscles to generate stability and movement on the opposing shoulder is movement golf for healthy joint spaces. As the hand makes contact with the floor in a crawl, the shoulder extensors engage along with teh alternate hip extensors to create stability. This works the X of the core across the body. Poor control in a crawl illicits a ‘tail wag’ and this is a great way to identify ineffective core and pelvic control.
Taking that into a standing position is vital for completing the necessary mobility and stability for biped movement. So if that back is feeling stiff after sitting all day. go for a walk and then go for a crawl - you may be surprised by just how good it makes the back feel.
So what are some of the crawls to do? THere are many differing versions of the basic crawl that can be implemented into your mobility. These are great as a warm up and can be used in an animal ‘flow’ which you may want to investigate as well. They really do get your going and get your stability working and prepared for any training regimes that you may be about to undertake.
SO getting into crawling is good for us. The use of infant movement patterns and going back to basics is just such a good way to re-establish those muscular and neural connections and keep us agile, confident on the floor and adaptive in our movement and strength. Its not hard to implement some crawling into your warm ups and its of such benefit as I have often said, to be like the kids and ‘play’.
