Bear crawl exercise is a movement generally included in Bootcamp style workouts, CrossFit workouts, and high-intensity training orders.
The Bear Crawl is a bodyweight conditioning movement in which you crawl on all fours while keeping your hips roughly level with your shoulders. The bear crawl exercise is generally included in Bootcamp style workouts, CrossFit workouts, Spartan training, and other high-intensity training routines. The total body movement challenges muscles everywhere in the body, enhances coordination, boosts the heart rate for cardiovascular benefits, and may help develop performance in a wide range of sports.
The Bear Crawl builds strength in the shoulders, wrists, core, and hip flexors. It suits all fitness levels, which makes it an excellent movement to include in a workout. This exercise involves almost every muscle group of the upper body, making it an effective compound exercise without needing any weights.
HOW TO PERFORM A BEAR CRAWL?
Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to perform a bear crawl. Before you try it, warm up your muscles and stretch for 5-10 minutes.
1. Begin in a crawl position. Your hands should be right under your shoulders, and your knees should be below your hips. You’ll be on all fours, just like a bear.
2. Brace your spine and flatten your back. The key idea is to contract your abdominal muscles as much as you can. Don’t start moving until your body feels stable in this position.
3. While keeping your core braced, slowly raise your knees off the ground and stay on your toes, still in the crawl position. Move your right arm and left leg forward together, then your left arm and right leg. Keep your knees hovering just off the ground as you crawl.
4. Cover whatever distance feels comfortable, then rest.
5. Repeat for as many rounds as your program calls for.
WHAT MUSCLES ARE WORKED IN A BEAR CRAWL?
The bear crawl is principally a strength- and mobility-building exercise, and it efficiently uses almost every muscle group in the body. The abdomen, shoulders, chest, glutes, and legs are the main muscles worked during this exercise. You’re working all of these muscles at the same time. It also improves joint mobility in the hips, wrists, spine, ankles, and knees.
9 BEAR CRAWL EXERCISE BENEFITS
The Bear Crawl boosts strength in the shoulders, wrists, core, and hip flexors. It suits all fitness levels, which makes it an excellent movement to include in a workout. There are many advantages to the bear crawl exercise and other “locomotive” or “quadrupedal” movements like it, including:
1. Coordination
The bear crawl is a “cross-body movement,” which makes it great for coordination and proprioception. Crawling is a movement we do in childhood, and it helps develop the connection between the right shoulder and left hip, and vice versa. We use this same diagonal connection whenever we walk or throw a ball.
2. Balance and Core Stability
Crawling also has a real balance component, since only two limbs are in contact with the ground at a time. Balancing this way is excellent for stabilizing the core. Part of this comes down to the multifidus, a chain of small muscles running up both sides of the spine, which contributes heavily to spinal stability. These muscles are packed with sensory receptors, so they help the body sense and react to small shifts in position while crawling.
3. Core Strength
More than the limbs, the bear crawl holds the core under continuous tension. This makes it work much like a plank or other isometric hold for the trunk, with the added benefit of training the obliques to resist rotation as you move. That transfers well to any activity that involves resisting rotation, such as wrestling. Building this kind of core strength endurance can make you more athletic and may help reduce injury risk.
4. Better Workout Efficiency
Compound exercises like the bear crawl help you gain more benefit in less time, since they work several muscle groups at once. For example, a 1-2 minute bear crawl set works your abdominal muscles, chest, shoulders, and lower body together, adding up to a more efficient workout.
5. Encourages Engagement
SARQ (speed, agility, reactivity, and quickness) style programs promote creative engagement with equipment, let you move more freely around the gym space, and boost engagement between participants. For example, pairs may compete against each other performing bear crawls, pull-ups, rope drills, and other full-body movements.
6. Aids Shoulder Health
Done with good form, the shoulders work hard to stabilize and carry the upper body’s weight as it moves forward during the bear crawl. This builds range of motion, stability, and strength that carry over to healthier shoulders generally.
7. Involves the Entire Body
Hands, arms, shoulders, back, abdominal muscles, and legs are all engaged in this single bodyweight movement.
8. Raises Heart Rate
It may not look like it, but this exercise gets your heart pumping, giving you a low-impact way to get a cardiovascular workout.
9. Enhances Athletic and Daily Performance
Athletes across many sports and levels benefit from agility training exercises like the bear crawl. Agility exercises are commonly built into training programs for sports such as volleyball, soccer, and football to improve on-field performance.
Getting your weekly dose of exercise doesn’t have to be complicated if you add bear crawls to your workout session. All you need to do is get on all fours and start crawling like a bear.
5 Bear Crawl modifications
1) Hold and Lift
Raise and hold your right hand and left leg at the same time. Once you finish one set, repeat with your left hand and right leg. Keep a neutral spine and avoid twisting or tilting your body while lifting and holding.
2) Table-Top Bear Crawl
A slower, more controlled variation that helps correct pelvic positioning. Start with your hands and feet in the same position as the standard bear crawl. Keep your hips level with your shoulders so your back stays flat, like a table surface, rather than arching. Then bring your hips back toward your heels, forming a straight line across your shoulders, hips, and knees before moving forward again.
3) Lateral Bear Crawl
Here you move side to side rather than forward and backward. With your hips slightly raised and knees off the ground, shift your right hand and left foot to the right, then bring your left hand and right foot to follow. Repeat for the desired number of reps, then switch directions.
4) Bear Squat
Start in the bear position, braced on your forearms and feet with knees off the ground. Bend your legs and raise your hips toward the ceiling, then return to the starting position carefully until your legs are straight. Aim for around 20 reps of this quad-focused variation to add variety to your bear crawls.
5) Resistance Bear Crawl
Moving at a faster pace or adding resistance makes the bear crawl more difficult. Combining a bear crawl with a push-up puts extra strain on the upper body and demands significantly more core strength.
What Number of Calories Does a Bear Crawl Burn?
People frequently ask how many calories bear crawls burn. As a rough, commonly cited estimate, bear crawls performed at a steady pace burn around 100 calories per 10 minutes of work, though this varies with body weight and effort level. Breathe steadily throughout and keep your pace sustainable.
Are bear crawls bad for you?
Form matters a lot here. The bear crawl needs decent hip and pelvic mobility to keep the spine neutral throughout the movement. If mobility is limited, the load tends to shift onto nearby joints instead, which over time can contribute to back discomfort. Rushing the movement for maximum speed, or holding it for a long time with poor form, adds unnecessary strain to the spine and joints. People with existing knee pain should avoid or modify the bear crawl, since it loads the wrists and knees directly, and anyone with back pain should check with a doctor or physical therapist before adding it to a routine.
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs) about the Bear Crawl Exercise
Ans. The bear crawl is a full-body workout that works your arms, shoulders, chest, back, core, and legs.
Ans. Yes, for most people. It works several major muscle groups at once and gives the core a real challenge, though people with knee or back problems should check with a doctor first.
Ans. Adding bear crawls to your routine is an efficient way to build strength and power, raise your heart rate, and support overall cardio fitness.
Ans. They can contribute to fat loss as part of an overall calorie deficit, while also helping build muscle strength.
Ans. Yes – it’s a simple but effective way to build core strength.
