Bear Crawl
oec:bear-crawl
A full-body quadrupedal locomotion exercise that builds core stability, shoulder endurance, and coordinated movement patterns.
Generated by gemini-3.8-flash from the sources below. No person has checked this record. Don't rely on it for safety.
Also called: Bear Walk, Bear Walk 2
How to do it
Setup
- Begin on all fours on hands and knees with your hands placed directly beneath your shoulders and knees under your hips.
- Tuck your toes and press through the balls of your feet to hover your knees one to two inches off the floor.
- Brace your core and maintain a flat, neutral spine.
Movement
- Step forward simultaneously with your right hand and left foot, keeping your movements short and controlled.
- Follow immediately by stepping forward with your left hand and right foot.
- Continue crawling forward in this contralateral pattern while keeping your hips level and knees hovering close to the ground.
Breathing
Breathe rhythmically and continuously through the nose and mouth while maintaining core brace.
Cues
- Knees low to the ground
- Opposite hand and foot move together
- Keep hips quiet and flat like a tabletop
Common faults
- Hips drifting excessively high into a pike position.
- Lower the hips and keep knees hovering just an inch or two above the floor.
- Excessive side-to-side torso sway during steps.
- Shorten your stride length and brace the core to resist rotation.
Safety
- Avoid if you have acute wrist pain or hyperextension discomfort unless modified on fists or parallettes.
Muscles
Joints
- Shoulder: Flexion, Extension, Isometric stabilization
- Shoulder blade: Protraction, Upward rotation
- Hip: Flexion, Extension
- Knee: Flexion, Extension
- Lumbar spine: Isometric stabilization
Details
- Movement
- Crawl, Anti-extension
- Modality
- Conditioning, Calisthenics
- Mechanics
- compound
- Force
- push
- Laterality
- contralateral
- Kinetic chain
- closed
- Level
- beginner
- Equipment
- None
- Record
- Distance; or Duration
- Load
- none
Sources
- wger: Bear Walk 2, by nate303303 (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
This record: CC-BY-SA-4.0.