Bear Crawl: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Benefits

The bear crawl looks childish and then destroys you about twenty seconds in. You get on all fours, lift your knees just off the floor, and move forward using opposite hand and opposite foot together while your hips refuse to rotate. That last part is the whole exercise. Everything else is transport.

It is worth learning properly because it trains your core the way your core actually gets used, resisting twist while your limbs move, rather than holding a static shape on a mat. There is no kit needed and it works in a hallway.

How to do a bear crawl

Clear a few metres of floor. A thin exercise mat helps if your knees are going to touch down while you learn.

1. Set the base. Kneel with your hands directly under your shoulders and your knees under your hips, about hip-width apart. Tuck your toes.
2. Lift the knees. Push the floor away, brace your abs, and raise your knees two to three centimetres. Not higher. Your back should be flat enough to balance a mug on.
3. Take the first step. Move your right hand and your left foot forward together, roughly 15cm each. Keep the knee low and the hips level.
4. Alternate. Left hand and right foot next. Small steps, contralateral pairs, and a pause of no more than a second between them.
5. Watch your hips. They should stay square and level, at the same height throughout. If they swing side to side or pop up towards the ceiling, your steps are too big.
6. Reverse it. Crawl backwards using the same pattern. Backwards is harder on the shoulders and easier on the hips, which is why coaches like it.

Muscles worked

A crawl recruits a startling number of muscles at once. Researchers who put surface electrodes on 30 muscles across the trunk and limbs during hands-and-knees crawling found that people default to a trot pattern, moving opposite limbs together, and that they speed up mainly by cutting the time each limb spends on the floor (EMG pattern recognition in human crawling motion, Frontiers in Neuroscience 2024). Which is a technical way of saying your body already knows this movement; you just have to stop it cheating.

• Deep core and obliques. The main event. Every time a hand leaves the floor, gravity tries to rotate your torso, and your abdominals stop it. Anti-rotation work, done at speed.
• Shoulders, triceps and serratus anterior. You are holding a moving plank on your hands, so the shoulder girdle works constantly to keep the ribcage from sagging between the shoulder blades.
• Quads and hip flexors. Holding a knee two centimetres off the ground is a static quad contraction, and driving it forward adds the hip flexors on top.
• Glutes. Each time one foot is airborne, the standing-side glute keeps the pelvis level.
• Forearms and grip. Underrated. Fingers spread and pressing into the floor for two minutes leaves the forearms burning.
• Lower back and multifidus. Quadruped positions load the multifidus at useful intensities without the spinal compression of loaded extension work, which makes them a common choice in rehab settings (EMG comparison of stabilization exercises in prone, quadruped and sitting positions).

Benefits

It builds core strength you can use. Sport rarely asks you to hold still. It asks you to keep your trunk stiff while your arms and legs do something chaotic, and the bear crawl trains exactly that.

Your shoulders learn to work. Loaded shoulder stability under a moving base is hard to reproduce with dumbbells. Crawling gets you there for free.

It costs nothing and needs no space. Two square metres and a floor. That is the entire equipment list, which makes it the exercise you can keep doing in a hotel room when your usual kettlebell session is not an option.

It spikes your heart rate fast. Thirty seconds of crawling puts most people into heavy breathing, which is why it slots neatly into circuits alongside mountain climbers and burpees. Two or three circuits a week contributes to the NHS target of 150 minutes of moderate activity, alongside strength work on at least two days (NHS physical activity guidelines for adults).

It exposes weak links. If one hip drops every time you step with the left hand, you have found something worth fixing that a plank would never have shown you.

Common mistakes

Hips rocking side to side. The single most common fault, and it means your steps are too long. Halve the distance of every step and slow down until the hips stay quiet.

Hips too high. People raise the backside to make the position easier on the abs, which turns the crawl into a downward-dog shuffle. Keep the back flat and the knees low; if that is too hard, hold the bear position without moving until it is not.

Hands drifting forward. As you tire, the hands creep out in front of the shoulders, which loads the wrists and drops the chest. Reset every few steps by checking your hands are stacked under your shoulders.

Same-side stepping. Moving right hand with right foot is a different exercise and a much easier one. Opposite pairs, every time.

Holding your breath. Crawling for 30 seconds while holding your breath makes you dizzy and makes the brace worse, not better. Breathe shallowly through the ribs and keep the abs tight.

Looking up. Craning your neck to see where you are going puts the cervical spine in extension for the whole set. Look at the floor about a metre ahead.

Variations

• Bear hold. No movement at all, just the knees hovering. Start here, aim for 30 seconds, and treat it as the entry requirement for everything below.
• Bear crawl with a shoulder tap. From the hold, tap the opposite shoulder with one hand, then the other. Brutal anti-rotation work with no travel needed.
• Backward bear crawl. Same pattern, reverse direction. Loads the shoulders more and is far harder to do without looking, so it demands better proprioception.
• Lateral bear crawl. Sideways, moving hand and foot on the same side together, then following with the other pair. Hits the adductors and obliques differently.
• Weighted bear crawl. Slide a light plate or a folded towel onto your lower back as a feedback tool. If it slides off, your hips moved. A weighted vest is the tidier option once you want real load.
• Bear crawl drag. Attach a light sled or drag a loaded towel behind you. This turns a core exercise into a conditioning one very quickly.

Sets and reps

• Learning it: 4 to 5 sets of a 20-second bear hold, resting 40 seconds. Progress to crawling only when the hold is steady.
• Core strength: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 10 metres forward and back, resting 60 seconds. Quality over distance.
• Conditioning: 20 to 30 seconds of continuous crawling as one station in a circuit, 3 to 4 rounds.
• Warm-up: 2 sets of 10 metres before lower-body training, to wake up the core and shoulders.

Progress by adding distance before you add load, then by slowing the tempo down so each step takes a full second. A slow crawl is much harder than a fast one, which surprises people the first time they try it.

Recommended reads

1. Plank: how to do it and why it works
2. Bird dog technique guide
3. Mountain climbers guide
4. The best exercise mats in the UK