A wise man once said to me, “If you want to be a great coach, you better focus on learning the basics before you ever think about all the fancy stuff”.  Progressions are a big part of life in general, and the same holds true for the development of an athlete.  When training an athlete, or anyone for that matter, you must first understand and appreciate how movement was developed and use this knowledge to physically educate the client.  Far too often we forget that before we walked, we crawled, literally and figuratively.  I’ll be honest, for many years I was as guilty as anyone for trying to get athletes to the next level as fast as I could.  Sometimes this was at the expense of their basic movement skills.  Deep down, as experienced trainers, we realize that an athlete might not be 100% ready for the next step in the progression.  However, for many reasons, that doesn’t always hold enough water to actually keep them back.  It could be due to the group setting, where 90% of the kids have picked it up and are ready to move on, which allows convenience to dictate advancement.  Or does the glam of moving heavy weights and sprinting across the field act too appealing to deny?  Whatever the reason may be, it is unquestionably irrational.  As a baby you progress from a stagnant, immobile being and progress in only a few years, to something that can walk, jog, sprint, jump, spin, and a whole bunch of other movement patterns.  So before opening up the latest book on periodization or sifting through a hot new study on post tetanic facilitation, I encourage you to dive a little deeper into the “basics”, which seem to be so basic that they have been forgotten for many of us.

Much of this thought process started to bloom shortly after the birth of my second son.  I knew that if I planned on teaching my boys what it meant to live a life of strength and health, I had better start brushing up on the fundamentals of age appropriate physical activities.  I was given a great piece of advice from a friend, who suggested I pick up a copy of Physical Education for Children: Building the Foundation by Gabbard, Leblanc and Lowy. I did, and it was probably the most well spent $10 of my life.  After only a few short pages, my entire training philosophy began to shift gears.  I realized that improving human performance was anything but a short-term process.  Sure, for years, I had been recommending athletes train for at least 3 months in order to get a true training effect, but after soaking up some of this book, I concluded that 3 months isn’t going to cut it.  A year, 3 years, 6 years…this was all I could justify as legitimate developmental periods of training.  Because of this long-term development model, more time can be devoted to the basics that lay the foundation for all of the advanced complex techniques practiced in the later stages of training.

Do not mistake this piece for a tutorial on youth training only.  I believe that our fast-paced, instantly gratifying, automated society has created a population with a complete lack of physical education.  Adults are just as in need of some P.E. as the poor kids who are being deprived of it in the school systems of today.  These adults need to re-learn how to move, be strong and healthy beings.  This is where my idea for Gym Class Core originated from and in a way, is a regression to an old article from many years ago. One of the first articles I ever wrote that was titled strength exercise for your core was a short depiction of some of the non-traditional methods of training your Core.   That article was mainly for athletes and other people who lift heavy and don’t have time to prop themselves up on a Bosu Ball and crunch their way into a disc herniation.  THIS article is a way of stepping back and taking a more primitive approach to the core training that may be just as demanding for many of the less mobile trainees of today.

Now to some of what I’ve been blabbing about.  If you ever played youth football you may recall one of the most dreaded forms of punishment known to man…the bear crawl.  Granted, the fact that preseason camp took place in the dead of August and the pads they gave you outweighed your own body didn’t make the movements any easier.  I remember toiling over which I thought would explode first, my body or my heart.  But looking back at this simple movement, I now realize how effective it can be at total body conditioning and functional core strengthening.  If you think about it, the crawl in general is one of the first “exercises” the body does to develop total systemic strength.  In a newsletter published by the National Association for Child Development, Robert and Ellen Doman state, “Crawling engages virtually all of the muscles of the body, from the arches of your feet to your abdominal and neck muscles, all of which are used in the process of moving your body forward across the floor.  Arm, chest, and back muscles are utilized in pulling the arms forward and then pulling the body forward. Quads, hips and hamstrings are worked during the leg movement.” The two go on to highlight that, aside from the military; hardly anyone has utilized a crawling movement since the age of one.

Besides the fact that crawling is a great tool for building system strength, it also develops an integral function of the brain that is used in an incredible amount of motor skills and non-movement skills.  Crawling actions are known as cross-lateral movements.  This means that the right and left sides of the body are working together simultaneously and require input from both sides of the brain.  In Carla Hannaford’s book,  Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head she states that “Cross lateral movements, like a baby’s crawling, activates both hemispheres [of the brain] in a balanced way.  These activities work both sides of the body evenly and involve coordinated movements of both eyes, both ears, both hands and both feet as well as balanced core muscles.  When both eyes, both ears, both hands and both feet are being used equally, the corpus callosum orchestrating these processes between the two hemispheres becomes more fully developed.  Because both hemispheres and all four lobes are activated, cognitive function is heightened and ease of learning increases.”

If you’re interested in hearing a little more about these types of movements, you can check out those writings as well as a couple others from Vern Gambetta and Carl Valle.  Gambetta, in  Athletic Development: The Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning, indicates that crawling is the basis of reciprocal movement that underlies most of the sport skills we see in competition.  Along these lines, in a wonderful piece on rope climbing for athletes, Valle discusses the role natural whole body movements, or cross-lateral movements, can have on a bodies capacity for improving coordinative efforts.

With only a few short suggestions on the benefits these movements can accompany, it baffles me that they are used so infrequently in GPP phases and warm up sessions across the board.  The only obstacle I have come across when implementing these movements has been logistical in nature.  SPACE.  Many trainers and commercial gym goers do not have the luxury of a 25 – 50 yard indoor turf space at their disposal.  Although I think it would be awesome to walk into a commercial gym and see some athlete doing bear crawls around the treadmills between the gerbils that are aimlessly jogging for hours, I don’t think it would fly with many gym owners.  So in lieu of this barrier, we came up with a series of exercises that honor the old school crawls and crabs without requiring all the space of the originals.

Let’s get down to the good stuff:

CRAB SERIES: The crab series to designed to go from a simple stable 4 point supine bridge, and progress into unstable, 2 and 3 point, rotational movements that challenge the core in a whole new way.  We usually program a new variation during each training cycle.

• Crab Hip Lift: Starting in the supine position (on your back).  Using both hands and both feet as your balancing points.  Squeeze your scapulae (shoulder blades), puff out your chest and then squeeze your glutes (butt) and drive your hips up into full extension.  Your finishing position should look like a table.  This is the CRAB.  Hold tension for 1 sec, drop down and repeat.  After a while you can start adding a Hold at the top. Start with a few seconds and build your way up as far as you want.  Don’t forget we’re squeezing the glutes and scapulae and creating tension, not avoiding it.

• Crab Single Leg Reach: Drive the hips up in the same manner as before.  As you approach the fully extended position, we extend one leg up as high as we can, maintaining a perfect posture everywhere else.  Alternate sides.

• Crab Single Arm Reach: Now we reach an arm instead of a leg at the top of the hip lift.  After getting the hang of just lifting your hand of the ground, believe me it can be trickier than it sounds, we want to take the arm and stack it over the other arm.  What the end result will be is a straight line from hand to hand (one on the ground, one as high in the air as possible) and a slight rotation at the t-spine.  I find this exercise to be a great activation tool as athletes get stronger because it works everything from hip extension, thoracic extension/rotation, shoulder stability and rotary stability.  Try it out and let me know what you think.

• Crab Diagonal Reach: Now as we lift the hips, we reach 1 arm and the opposite leg towards each other leaving only 2 contralateral points of balance, which obviously increases the difficulty by a lot.  We hold the lift and alternate sides.  A great progression of this movement is incorporating the hip lift simultaneously with the diagonal limb reaches to get a more coordinated effort from the entire body.

• Crab Rotational Reach: In this movement, we bridge up into the hip lift and hold it. Then bring 1 leg under the other and drive your foot as far through as possible. At the same time, reach the opposite hand in the opposite direction as far as possible.  This will result in a lot of rotation and repositioning but maintain your torso positioning.   You know what…just watch the video and enjoy.

BEAR SERIES: The same progressions (stable to unstable, 4 point to 2 point) are applied to the bear series.  This is, however, a more dynamic progression that involves a little more movement.

• Bear Hold: Nothing fancy here.  Get into the 4 point bear position (push up with flexed hips and knees) and make sure to keep your hips about shoulder height.  Lifting your hips up does little to alleviate the amount of fatigue your arms will feel, but makes a world of difference on your legs and core.  Stay low and hold your ground.  If you can hold it for 30 seconds you are able to move to the next step.
• Bear Diagonal Reach and Crunch: Bear position.  Think about a birddog without the knees touching the ground.  Extend one arm as far forward as possible and the opposite leg as far back as possible. It is important to maintain torso position, and avoid allowing your plant leg to straighten.  If you get the reach down, add the crunch by bringing the elbow and knee together without moving your torso at all.
• Bear Lateral Jump: Start in the bear position.  Keeping hands planted firmly on the ground jump both feet out to the side, if possible over a small object.  Progress from individual jumps, where you maintain position before repeating to the opposite side, into repetitive continuous jumps.  In this version you want to keep your feet vertical (as they are in the starting position just slightly out to the side).
• Bear Flank Vault: Start in the bear position.  Jump both feet out to the side but this time you will be rotating your torso in the direction you jump.  Unlike the lateral jump, when your torso rotates you will land with your feet slightly rotated as well to keep toes, hips and chest facing the same direction.  We have 3 progressions to this variation.  The first was just described. The second adds a unilateral vertical reach.  Once the feet land, reach the jump side arm as high as you can.  The last variation is to start the bear position with 1 arm up already and continue the movement as described.

• Bear Dancer: Start in the Bear position…again.  Think of a break-dancer in this one.  While reaching 1 leg under the other one and up and away as far as possible, reach your opposite hand out towards the foot.  This will result in rotation and repositioning but avoid the unnecessary torso movement.

• Bear Rotational Reach: Same as the Crab Rotational Reach except you’re in a bear position.  Bring 1 leg under the other and drive your foot as far through as possible. At the same time, reach the opposite hand in the opposite direction as far as possible.  This will result in a lot of rotation and repositioning but maintain your torso positioning.

Whether you’re an athlete in need of some multi-planar semi chaotic core training or just a hard-core gym rat looking for a twist to spice things up, give some of these a try and I doubt you’ll be disappointed.  Most people who are unfamiliar with these movements will, undoubtedly, look very uncomfortable and very uncoordinated.  This fact alone should make you wonder what you may be missing in your routine.  Training shouldn’t always be comfortable and familiar, so change things up.  Mastering any new movement will only make you better.

Gabbard, Carl, Elizabeth LeBlanc, and Susan Lowy. Physical Education for Children: Building the Foundation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994. Print.

NACD – Newsletter – Down Syndrome: The Importance of Crawling on the Stomach. The National Association for Child Development. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://nacd.org/newsletter/1009_down_syndrome_crawling.php>.

Hannaford, Carla. Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head. Arlington, VA: Great Ocean, 1995. Print.

Gambetta, Vern. Athletic Development: the Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007. Print.

Valle, Carl. “Hope on a Rope.” Weblog post. Regeneration Lab. Web. 25 Aug. 2003.

Jeremy can be reached at jeremyfrisch@gmail.com