5 Reasons Adults Should Be Crawling

by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS

Many of us think of crawling as something that we forget about as soon as we were able to ambulate in an upright position.  It makes sense not to crawl when you don’t have to, because we are faster and more efficient walking and running as compared to crawling if we are simply looking at speed and ease of movement.  However, we need to keep in mind that crawling is a basic neurodevelopmental pattern that we should all be performing for a number of reasons.

Unfortunately for many of us, our patients and/or our clients, a number of people never crawled as infants.  When infants skip over this developmental milestone, the decreased neurological efficiency is felt for years, unless they go back and readdress it later in life.  Some of us did crawl as infants, but unfortunately, we just forgot how to do it.  Regardless, we can all look for some good direction from the infants in our life for overall health.

There are a number of reasons that I love crawling for my patients and clients and here are 5 of them:

1. Brain Development:  If you read my posts or attend my courses, you know that I believe that the brain reigns supreme.  Developing the brain and improving movement through facilitating the neurological system is the number 1 priority for my treatment and training process.  Crawling develops the brain by promoting cross patterning between the left and right side of the body (left arm/right leg with each step).  Cross patterning has been shown to improve cognition, coordination, spacial awareness, balance, and memory.  So, even if you aren’t trying to treat a specific injury or part of the body, working across the body’s midline is great for brain health.
2. Improved Neurological Feedback:  Of course this is closely related to item #1.  The feedback that we get back to the brain and nervous system from the hands and bottoms of our feet cannot be overstated.  Looking at the homunculus man, we are reminded that much of our neurological feedback comes through our extremities.  Putting people in the quadruped position is a great way to directly plug feedback into the brain via the palms of the hands and the big toes (the big toe’s contribution to the kinetic chain is extremely under appreciated).  This feedback is a great way to heighten and prime the nervous system for motor learning and changes in movement patterns.
3. Shoulder Stability:  Placing the upper extremity in a closed chain position forces the shoulder complex to work the way that it was intended to and promotes shoulder stability.  Unfortunately, many upper extremity strength exercises, such as the bench press, provide an artificial stability to parts of the shoulder complex (i.e. the scapula against the bench), thus changing the mechanics of the shoulder when it isn’t receiving that extra stability.  Closed chain movements such as crawling and pushups promote proper scapular mechanics and improve overall stability at the shoulder.  The sooner I can get shoulder and hip patients crawling, the better off they are because of the stability required in that area to perform this movement.
4. Trunk Stability:  Placing the body in the prone, quadruped position and moving promotes core and trunk stability.  Think of it as a moving plank with times of limited support while limbs are in the air.  It also works along the 2 functional fascial line because of the opposite arm/opposite leg patterning.  Forcing people to move slowly and keeping their pelvis flat also engages the deep front fascial line, thus improving the function of the deep, inner unit stabilizers.  Because of the stability required and flexion bias, we use crawling as mainstay with our low back pain patients (just as an example).
5. Metabolics:  Anyone who has done any crawling variations knows that it is just plain hard work.  My college athletes hate it when the word “bearcrawl” comes out of my mouth.  It is a total body movement that incorporates virtually all multi-joint muscles to both stabilize and create the movement.  Research has shown that by utilizing our multi-joint muscles, we require a very high oxygen uptake, demonstrating a high metabolic demand overall.  We use crawling as a great way to finish a lot of our workouts because it adds a level of conditioning to their training session.

Overall, we love crawling and use it often with our health and injured clients.  Next week we’ll look at some good variations of crawling.

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