Understanding the bear crawling exercise: An excellent full-body movement 

The bear crawling exercise is a full-body strengthening and stabilizing movement that engages nearly all your major muscle groups. This bodyweight exercise fires up your muscles, burn calories, and boost your cardiovascular health by amping up your heart rate.

Although the bear crawling exercise may seem quite easy as all you have to do is crawl, the movements involved in the exercise are sure to burn your muscles in just a few reps.

Continue reading as we discuss the advantages of doing the bear crawl and what muscles does this exercise primarily targets.

Bear crawl muscles worked

Bear crawls target the core muscles. (Photo via Freepik)

Besides working on your cardiovascular health and metabolism, the bear crawling exercise targets multiple muscles simultaneously. These include the shoulders, arms, chest, and back in the upper body and the hamstrings, glutes, quads, and hips in the lower body.

Bear crawls particularly target the core muscles and help strengthen the entire midsection. This exercise even works on the deep core muscles, called obliques.

How to do the bear crawling exercise?

To do this exercise correctly, follow these steps:

Step 1: Start on your fours with your knees and palms on the floor. Make sure your posture is upright and your back is straight. Keep your legs at a hip-width distance and place your arms at your shoulder-width.

Step 2: Now move your right hand and left foot forward at an equal distance while maintaining the posture of your body.

Step 3: Repeat the movement with your left hand and right leg and continue to crawl for a few steps.

To make the exercise a bit more challenging, increase your reps and level up your speed. You can also add resistance to the movement by looping a resistance band in your legs or wearing a weighted vest.

Use a resistance band to make bear crawling challenging. (Photo via Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk)

What are the key bear crawl benefits?

Regular practice of bear crawling exercise can offer some incredible benefits, such as:

It can build core strength

If you want to develop massive strength in your midsection, adding bear crawls to your workout routine can be result-worthy. This exercise not only helps develop core strength but it targets the deep core muscles and builds core stabilization as well. It can help sculpt your abs and provide definition, too.

It strengthens the shoulders and arms

Bear crawling is one of the best exercises to sculpt your shoulders and arms without using heavy weights. This exercise puts the majority of your body weight into your primary upper body muscles, thereby targeting your arms and shoulders even more efficiently.

Bear crawls are also an ideal exercise for people who have recently recovered from a shoulder injury as the movement can be low-impact compared to other weight-lifting shoulder exercises. And because you are on your fours, this exercise can help keep your shoulders and spine stabilized, too.

Bear crawling targets the shoulders and arms. (Photo via Pexels/Ketut Subiyanto)

It challenges your coordination

The bear crawl involves moving opposite limbs simultaneously which helps challenge your coordination and overall balance. However, to benefit more, try crawling laterally instead of moving straight.

No equipment is required

The best thing about this strengthening exercise is that it doesn’t require any exercise equipment, though you can use a resistance band or a weighted vest to intensify the movement. Additionally, the exercise does require an open space so that you can move freely for a few steps.

It pumps your heart rate

Bear crawling is a great exercise to improve your overall cardiovascular fitness. This exercise gets your heart rate pumping, burns calories and makes an excellent cardio exercise.

Bear crawling improves cardiovascular health. (Photo via Pexels/Li Sun)

You can add the bear crawl exercise to your workout routine as a warm-up move or as a part of your full-body cardio training session. It can also be added to your core-strengthening routine or done as a stand-alone exercise.

While this exercise is safe and can be mastered easily, people with a history of pain and injuries in their wrists, shoulders, and hips should first consult a doctor before attempting it. Moreover, if you feel any pain while performing the exercise, stop immediately and take some rest.