Crab Walk Exercise: How To, Muscles Worked, & Advantages

Moving like an animal might sound like something your kids do while they’re playing. And while it likely is, it also needs to be something you do frequently, too. Animal-style body weight exercises reminiscent of the crab walk are an incredible full-body workout with many advantages. 

It’s likely that once you consider animal movements, exercises just like the bear crawl are first to return to mind. Rest assured, though, that the crab walk is one other highly effective movement that may improve your functional strength and power, all while improving your joint strength and core stability.

Able to bring this animal movement back to your workout routine? We’re about to debate it intimately, so the best way to do it, why it’s best to do it, and a few great alternative movements.

Table of Contents:

• What Is The Crab Walk Exercise?
• What Muscles Does The Crab Walk Work?
• Does The Crab Walk Construct Muscle?
• How To Perform Proper Crab Walk Form
• Crab Walk Mistakes To Avoid
• Crab Walk Advantages
• How To Create Crab Walk Variations
• Best Crab Walk Alternatives
• How To Make The Crab Walk Easier Or Harder
• Programming The Crab Walk & A Sample Workout
• FAQs

What Is The Crab Walk Exercise?

The crab walk is a full-body crawling exercise that helps construct joint strength, core stability, functional strength, and power. It also functions to enhance your proprioception, which in turn helps improve posture, coordination, and balance. 

The exercise is completed by crawling in your hands and feet together with your body facing up toward the ceiling. The crab walk exercise comes from the animal flow type of movements. It’s a ground-based movement program designed to enhance our animal locomotive moving style.

To the untrained eye, it might seem like a mix of meditation, break dancing, yoga, and calisthenics. But rest assured, it’s an incredible movement that may improve your fitness no matter your goal. 

What Muscles Does The Crab Walk Work?

It is important to notice that the crab walk is a superb total body workout. This movement style is as functional because it gets with the coordination, strength, and control it provides to all these moving parts. 

While the crab walk may not give these muscles the identical muscle hypertrophy as other bodybuilding exercises, they need to all work together to make the movement occur.

• Triceps: The three-headed muscle on the back of your upper arm extends your elbow and rotates your arm. They play an enormous role as stabilizers within the crab walk as you place all the burden in your hands together with your arms straight. Your triceps have to be strong to raise your body throughout the crab walk. 
• Deltoids: Your deltoids are triangular-shaped muscles on top of your shoulder. They’ve three heads, including the anterior, lateral, and posterior. Through the crab walk, it primarily targets the rear head of the deltoid. It assists the lat with extending the arm and provides the force needed to rotate, allowing your arms to maneuver backward and forward. 
• Lats: The latissimus dorsi is the most important muscle in your back. The wing-shaped muscle on each side of your back functions to increase your shoulder throughout the crab walk. Each step you are taking and the farther you push your arms behind you requires the lats to stabilize throughout the movement. 
• Pectoralis Major: The most important fan-shaped muscle of your chest plays a job and works with the deltoids and lats to assist stabilize throughout the crab walk movement. It really works to flex, adduct, and internally rotate the humerus. 
• Trapezius & Rhomboids: The traps are diamond-shaped muscles in your upper back. They function together with your rhomboids situated in your upper back between your shoulder blades and beneath your traps. They work together to regulate shoulder retraction throughout the crab walk. 
• Glutes: The gluteus maximus, AKA your butt, is the most important muscle in your body and plays an enormous role during this movement. Its primary function is hip extension, which is difficult at work throughout the crab walk to maintain your butt off the ground. The glute medius and minimus are smaller muscles situated near the glute max and likewise stabilize your pelvis, help bring your legs to the side, and rotate your legs. 
• Hamstrings: The hamstrings are situated on the backside of your thigh and are accountable for your knee’s flexion and extension of your hips. As you might be crab walking forward, the hamstrings are firing to tug you along and keep your hips off the ground. Each step is sort of a mini hamstring curl that works with the remaining of your posterior chain. 
• Quadriceps: The muscle on the front of your thigh flexes the knee and hip. The quads will work especially hard when you perform the backward crab walk variation, as they may push you backward as you progress. 
• Core: Don’t think they’re less necessary simply because we’re lumping these muscles together. The core is a collective term for all midsection muscles, including your rectus abdominis, erector spinae, transverse abdominis, and oblique systems. The core muscles work as a team to support and stabilize the lumbar spine throughout the crab walk. Remember, the upper your hips lift, the harder your core will work. 

Does The Crab Exercise Construct Muscle?

As we mentioned, the crab walk is not going to provide the hypertrophy effects that bodybuilding-style resistance training exercises will. It is going to construct total body strength but is more geared toward conditioning and higher movement than constructing muscles.

It won’t compete with compound exercises like a squat, deadlift, or bench press, but that does not imply it shouldn’t have a spot in your program. 

Proper Crab Walk Form

As you crawl in your hands and feet, you are placing the load totally on your shoulders, triceps, glutes, and hamstrings. The upper you raise your torso toward the ceiling, the harder your core can have to work. 

Here’s the best way to properly perform the crab walk exercise.

The right way to do the Crab Walk Exercise:

• Start by sitting on the bottom. Bend your knees and place your feet barely in front of your knees. Place your hands 2-3 inches behind your shoulders, and ensure that your fingers point towards your hips.
• Begin by lifting your hips a couple of inches off the bottom as you press into your hands to push your body away from the ground. Ensure to maintain your legs bent and arms straight.
• Now, it is time to coordinate your hand and foot movements. Pick your right foot up and move it forward as you concurrently move your left hand forward. Repeat this together with your left foot and right hand. Deal with controlling the contralateral movement (connecting one side of your body to the opposite) when you alternate sides for indicated reps or distance.
• Maintain a neutral posture. Throughout the move, you’ll want to ensure that you maintain a neutral posture. Keep your shoulder blades retracted and down. Your body goes to need to arch your back and tilt your pelvis. Don’t let it.

Crab Walk Mistakes To Avoid

Avoid these common mistakes and use a few of these quick tricks to help with form.

• Bending Elbows: Do not forget that the triceps’ primary function is to increase the elbow, so during this movement, you have to keep your arms locked out all the time. It’s normal for the elbows to need to bend during this movement, especially once you get drained. Elbow bending may also be an indication that your hands and wrists are too tight or weak to support the burden placed on them. Ensure to root your hands into the ground and push the bottom away as if attempting to lift as high as possible. 
• Flat Feet: Through the crab walk, you would like to ensure your heel touches the ground. This may help with hip stability and interact your glutes and hamstrings throughout the movement. Consider hip thrusting yourself up to make sure your glutes are working, after which maintain this position while walking.
• Going Too Fast: When you attempt to rush through the crab walk to get it done, your form is more likely to break down. When starting, it’s more necessary to do as many reps or whatever distance you may with good, slow, and controlled form as an alternative of going fast to get it done. Crawl and deal with connecting all the body to assist perform this movement. 
• Uneven Weight Distribution: Certainly one of the fundamental advantages of this exercise is the way it connects one side of the body to the opposite. Sometimes, with imbalances, we start to shift the way in which we move without even noticing it. When you end up leaning more to 1 side, decelerate and deal with activating the muscles on the opposite side. Something so simple as feeling more weight in a component of your hand or foot on that side will allow the burden to shift back. 

Crab Walk Advantages

By doing the crab walk frequently, you may reap a few of these advantages out of your workouts. If you would like to learn much more, try the Top 9 Advantages Of Unconventional Training.

1) Improves Upper Body Strength:

This exercise will provide a distinct style of strength than a bench press as an upper body movement. It is going to force your delts, lats, triceps, and pecs to stabilize your shoulder throughout the movement.

The triceps must work extremely hard to lock out the elbow and handle all of the force you place on them, together with the shoulders. 

2) Full Body Exercise:

This term is usually used for combo movements like a lunge and bicep curl. While combo moves like that could seem total body because they work one upper and one lower body muscle, movements just like the crab walk are far superior as a full body movement.

In a crab walk, your core have to be strong enough to transfer power from the upper to the lower body. Plus, the coordination between the 2 makes all the things stronger as an entire. Remember, your body is a machine and wishes to be trained as an entire slightly than simply tweaking one part at a time. 

3) Improve Balance:

Remember the pat your head and rub your tummy trick? That will feel like a coordination challenge, however it has nothing on the crab walk.

Each step requires opposite sides of your body to work together during this animalistic movement. Transferring the burden on each step challenges your core and connects your upper and lower body. 

4) Increased Coordination And Focus:

As your body works hard to balance during this exercise, you’ll have to focus seriously to make sure all these muscles work together.

When you lose focus for a moment, something that’s drained, like your triceps or core, might give out on you. Your brain have to be fully locked in to think about this movement. This may carry over to your other movements and your ability to focus during a difficult exercise. 

5) No Equipment Is Needed:

The crab walk is terrific to place in a circuit or by itself and requires no equipment. We’re only tackling this one animal movement today, but the great thing about it’s that you could perform it anywhere, and you do not require anything. 

6) Fun And Unique:

Sometimes, you would like a distinct and fun exercise to bring out the inner child in you. Not only is it fun, however it’s also a pleasant break from the identical monotonous strength training exercises that may get boring.

7) Easy Learning Curve:

The crab walk can have many moving parts, but learning it is easy and straightforward. It is well scalable and will be done by almost anyone. That, combined with the undeniable fact that you do not need any equipment, makes this an awesome option.

8) Improve Shoulder Stability:

As mentioned, your upper body muscles must work together to stabilize your shoulder throughout the movement and have to be strong enough to maintain you lifted off the bottom as you progress.

Each step provides a compressive force on the shoulder girdle and helps construct the resiliency of the joint so it may possibly handle movement and ensure you do not get injured. 

How To Create Crab Walk Variations

There are several ways you may boost a standard crab walk. For instance, perform the lateral crab walk, which is once you move laterally, requiring you to maneuver the identical hand and foot as an alternative of opposite sides. This variation will seriously work your core and glutes!

The banded crab walk is one other great option. Simply add a band around your knees before you assume the crab position. Your lower body can have to work extra hard against the resistance!

Clocktower crab walks are one other interesting option. To perform this version, you may stay in a single spot, but your body will rotate in a whole circle just like the hands on a clock, which is able to challenge the rotator muscles of your core.

Crab Walk Alternatives

When you’re not up for a full crab walk, or you only need to throw some variety in the combo, try these 2 crab walk alternatives.

1) Reverse High Plank:

This plank variation is an awesome place to begin to get your body used to the crab walk position before you begin to maneuver. It’s a improbable option for strengthening your posterior chain and is a superb complement to regular planks. Here’s the best way to do it:

The right way to do the Reverse High Plank:

• Sit on the bottom together with your legs straight and heels touching the ground. Place your palms on the bottom barely behind your shoulders together with your fingers facing your feet. 
• Press into your palms and drive into your heels to lift your hips as high as possible until your entire body is on one flat line like a daily plank.
• Keeping your legs and arms straight and head neutral, hold for the indicated time. 

2) Glute March:

This exercise strengthens the posterior chain in preparation for the crab walk. The added motion of lifting one leg off the ground and alternating will prepare your glutes to stabilize throughout the walking portion of the crab walk. 

The right way to do the Glute March:

• Lie on the bottom and bend your legs, placing your feet under your knees together with your heels on the ground and your toes lifted. Ensure your arms are resting at your sides for support. 
• Keeping your shoulders on the bottom, drive through your heels and lift your hips as high as possible while keeping your rib cage relaxed. Hold this position, and that is your place to begin.
• Keeping your leg bent at the identical angle, lift your right leg off the ground and convey it into your chest as close as possible without letting your hips sag or drop backward and forward. Bring the leg back down, and as soon because it touches the ground, lift the left leg and repeat. 
• Alternate sides for indicated reps, and ensure that your hips stay lifted and your back stays flat. 

How To Modify the Crab Walk

For some people, the crab walk will be extremely difficult on their wrists. Stretching your wrists and performing some mobility exercises will probably be a long-term fix, but you may try using push-up hand grippers to take care of a neutral wrist position within the short term.

There are other ways to change this move, including using one in every of the alternatives to make sure your posterior chain is robust enough to carry the position. You may improve muscular strength with those movements before progressing to the crab walk.

How To Make the Crab Walk Harder

When you wish to make the crab walk harder, you may at all times add progressive overload concepts. Either attempt to do more reps, crawl farther, or crawl faster with good form.

On top of that, you possibly can crawl up a hill, change directions, add a band, or insert the crawl right into a circuit with other exercises, including weights. Remember, the upper you are attempting to lift your hips and maintain that position, the more you may keep your core engaged. 

Programming the Crab Walk

As a warmup, try doing 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps on all sides. And, for conditioning and challenge, try giving yourself a distance, timing how long it takes you to do it, after which attempting to break that point. 

Crab walks are at all times an awesome fit for circuit training or interval workouts. Add them for a timed interval of 1 minute, together with several other exercises. If performing the circuit as a HIIT workout, you may complete this for 1-2 rounds as a finisher or 4-5. 

Sample Crab Walk Workout

This great workout we now have provided today will probably be for a full-body day. It is going to include strength training exercises and appropriate placement for a crab walk after the strength movements have fatigued essential muscle groups.

FAQs

Now we’ll go over a few of the more common questions on crab walks to ensure that you have got all the things covered.

Why are crab walks so hard? 

Crab walks are difficult as a result of the stress on the wrists and shoulders and the complete body coordination required to perform the movement. It is just not a movement you perform in your on a regular basis life as an adult, so it may possibly be difficult. 

What’s crab walk exercise good for? 

The crab walk is a improbable conditioning tool and a functional movement for practicing locomotion and coordination.

How long must you crab walk? 

Treat it like every other exercise and follow the suitable sets and reps on your starting level. See how far you may go in your first set, and you will have an excellent idea of your starting reps. 

Is the crab walk good for the knees? 

The crab walk builds your posterior chain in addition to your quads. When this stuff are strong, your knees will thanks. 

What’s a crab hold exercise? 

This exercise is holding the crab walk position as high as possible for time as an alternative of moving forward. 

Crab Walk Workouts: Key Takeaways

Because the name suggests, the crab walk is an animal-inspired body weight exercise with a spread of benefits. This unique crawling movement involves being on all fours together with your body facing upwards, and it provides advantages reminiscent of enhancing upper body strength, fostering full-body coordination, improving balance, and shoulder stability.

It’s a flexible exercise that requires no special equipment, making it suitable for various settings. Plus, its simplicity by way of learning and scalability makes it accessible to a broad range of people. Add the crab walk to your sessions for a fun and unique alternative to standard strength training exercises, and get a component of enjoyment in your fitness routines.

Excited by more animalistic-style exercises? Take a look at our article on the Bear Crawl! And for many who prefer bodyweight-style training, try our Full Body weight Workout To Get You Ripped & Shredded!