Can You Crawl Yourself Fit? F#ck Yeah You Can And A WHOLE Lot More!
When I started researching info for this blog, I had no interest in crawling and had never even considered it as any form of exercise.
I fell 3 times though in one day and had no choice but to crawl for quite awhile during the next few hours.
You see, for those of you who don’t know, back several years ago I suffered a near life threatening auto accident on a local expressway.
The details are rather horrid and saddening, so I’ll spare you that here.
As a result of the accident however, I ended up with 5 unresponsive nerves in my left leg and an anteriorly tilted pelvis. This has left me with a significant degree of myelopathy in both areas and between…
Hey, I survived and am alive though, so I believe that counts for something. I am told I am still and slowly healing and that my nerves will regenerate over several years if not the rest of my life! Nerves only regenerate at about a millimeter a day according to my Neurosurgeon at the time. This is the same speed at which human hair grows, smh!
So, after falling and finally making it into bed and sleeping all night. The next morning, I felt fucking great! It as like I got zapped with some of that super soldier serum they gave to Captain America!
Granted, I still have my injuries, but I was fluid, dynamic, felt powerful and ready to do some things, lol! I sat and ruminated about it wondering why and the it hit me! It was all of that activity and physical demands on my body, by having to crawl for so long, over and over again!
I thought to myself; “Could there be something to this?’ I mean, we crawl as babies before we walk. God’s way of conditioning and preparing our pre- toddler bodies for walking! Like warming up a cold car, or breaking in a new mattress!
BUT, once we start walking, we never return to crawling again. Even as a reset after injury, o just an aging body with life’s aging and damage. WE NEED TO START!!
I have started the day before writing this article and will for the rest of football season and by Spring. I should be that much more healed, trimmer, leaner, more fluid and even brain capacity smarter! Oh yeah, that right! Brain improvement’s! keep reading and learn…
Crawling: it’s not just what you do when you’re a baby who hasn’t yet learned how to walk. The truth is, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, including crawling in your life is a great way to level up your health and general fitness.
Crawling is a basic movement, but we often forget how to do it once we start walking as I stated earlier. And just because you might not need to crawl to get from A to B anymore, doesn’t mean it’s not still amazing for you.
Mayo Clinic even points to crawling skills being critical in reducing your fall risk (I felt like I was singled out when I read that, lol!) . After all, if you’re not able to get down on the floor and move around and get back up with ease.
It’s more likely you’ll struggle to get on your feet again after a fall. In fact, crawling is often used in rehabilitation and physical therapy programs! I had NO knowledge of this, as the 2 times I went to PT after my accident, they only had me squeezing balls and stretching rubber bands, smh!
The benefits of crawling
While crawling might look easy, you’d be foolish to think this exercise is child’s play. Depending on the movement, crawling exercises require great coordination and engage a number of different muscles, from your abs to your chest, arms and pecs, to your obliques and triceps.
It sounds obvious, but crawling is a truly versatile movement that can be done anywhere, anytime! It’s one of the fundamental movements we learn at a young age that forms the foundation for the other movements your body makes, and it’s important to be able to maintain these movement patterns to build and maintain functional strength into adulthood.
Crawling promotes core stability while also involving the vestibular system, which is our sense of balance and motion. As soon as you begin, you’ll realize how much core engagement and muscle control is required!
While further research is required into the mental benefits of crawling, there’s no denying it makes for a truly effective exercise.
Why We Should All Try Crawling As Adults
Crawling can strengthen muscles, especially the core, but the thing it’s most lauded for is its re-alignment capabilities.
From improving posture to strengthening neural connections, crawling as an adult takes us back to early childhood when our bodies were first growing and developing.
Crawling’s ability to correct years of damage and return us to our earliest state of mobility is like a reset for our physical health. Bipedal life has its advantages, but there’s also plenty of room for damage, which is where adult crawling comes into play.
It can reverse longstanding (bad) habits and jumpstart old patterns of movement and connectivity that maybe your body had forgotten. Even if it’s done for only three or 10 minutes a day, the simple movement can have a positive impact on the body.
I have learned that crawling is terrific for reversing rounded shoulders, loosening tight fascia, improving hip stiffness, and lessening back pain, among other benefits. A scalable exercise, crawling can be done at any age and anywhere.
It also doesn’t require equipment, although knee pads are highly encouraged especially for beginners or those without carpeting. Get to the point where crawling is fun and not embarrassing, so be patient with yourself and diligent with your practice.
With time, your adult body will reintegrate into the same movement patterns you followed as an infant. The only difference is that now, instead of wearing diapers, you’re wearing knee pads, lol!
Benefits of crawling for adults:
- Neural system development (brain-body connection to be able to do more stuff)
- Improvement in coordination, learning, and behavior
- Strengthen the shoulder complex
- Increase proprioceptive feedback, hand strength, and dexterity
- Core developer
- Mobility training for the joints like hips and shoulders
- Excellent transfer from the gym into real-world tasks and activities
A large majority of us adults de-evolve with age… This is a sad reality, but fact! When we are young, we move frequently. Somewhere along the way, usually, after college ends and careers start, daily movement nose dives.
Non-exercise activity drops, which is concerning because of the undeniable data being published related to daily step count and the relationship to all-cause mortality. Movement, and our ability to move well, is a use it or lose it situation.
It’s Wolff’s Law at it’s finest. Either keep moving or the ability to move gradually declines. So, before you listen to one of us fitness pros, lol… barking out orders to plow through a 60-minute high-intensity crawling workout, please consider taking a more sensible approach.
Haven’t worked out consistently for a while? Guess what… biologically you’re different now. Work back into slow, in manageable doses, with adequate rest and recovery separating work sets and workouts throughout the week.
Now, the positive news is that you can get back into shape, health and general fitness, movement, and more specific to my blog here. By getting off your ass, on the floor and , CRAWLING, right the fuck now!
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