Written by Travis Halena | ACSM CPT
Fact checked by Kirsten Yovino, CPT Brookbush Institute
FACT CHECKED
Moving like an animal might sound like something your kids do while they're playing. And while it likely is, it should also be something you do regularly, too. Animal-style bodyweight exercises such as the crab walk are an incredible full-body workout with many benefits.
It's likely that when you think of animal movements, exercises like the bear crawl are first to come to mind. Rest assured, though, that the crab walk is another highly effective movement that will improve your functional strength and power, all while improving your joint strength and core stability.
Ready to bring this animal movement back to your workout routine? We're about to discuss it in detail, so you know how to do it, why you should do it, and some great alternative movements.
Table of Contents:
- What Is The Crab Walk Exercise?
- What Muscles Does The Crab Walk Work?
- Does The Crab Walk Build Muscle?
- How To Perform Proper Crab Walk Form
- Crab Walk Mistakes To Avoid
- Crab Walk Benefits
- 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 build joint strength, core stability, functional strength, and power. It also functions to improve your proprioception, which in turn helps improve posture, coordination, and balance.
The exercise is done by crawling on your hands and feet with your body facing up toward the ceiling. The crab walk exercise comes from the animal flow style of movements. It is a ground-based movement program designed to improve our animal locomotive moving style.
To the untrained eye, it may look like a combination of meditation, break dancing, yoga, and calisthenics. But rest assured, it's an amazing movement that will improve your fitness regardless of your goal.
What Muscles Does The Crab Walk Work?
It's important to note that the crab walk is an excellent total body workout. This movement style is as functional as 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 same muscle hypertrophy as other bodybuilding exercises, they must all work together to make the movement happen.
- Triceps: The three-headed muscle on the back of your upper arm extends your elbow and rotates your arm. They play a massive role as stabilizers in the crab walk as you place all the weight on your hands with your arms straight. Your triceps must be strong to elevate your body during the crab walk.
- Deltoids: Your deltoids are triangular-shaped muscles on top of your shoulder. They have three heads, including the anterior, lateral, and posterior. During 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 move from side to side.
- Lats: The latissimus dorsi is the largest muscle on your back. The wing-shaped muscle on both sides of your back functions to extend your shoulder during the crab walk. Each step you take and the farther you push your arms behind you requires the lats to stabilize during the movement.
- Pectoralis Major: The biggest fan-shaped muscle of your chest plays a role and works with the deltoids and lats to help stabilize during the crab walk movement. It works to flex, adduct, and internally rotate the humerus.
- Trapezius & Rhomboids: The traps are diamond-shaped muscles on your upper back. They function with your rhomboids located on your upper back between your shoulder blades and beneath your traps. They work together to control shoulder retraction during the crab walk.
- Glutes: The gluteus maximus, AKA your butt, is the largest muscle in your body and plays a huge role during this movement. Its primary function is hip extension, which is hard at work during the crab walk to keep your butt off the floor. The glute medius and minimus are smaller muscles located near the glute max and also stabilize your pelvis, help bring your legs to the side, and rotate your legs.
- Hamstrings: The hamstrings are located on the backside of your thigh and are in charge of your knee's flexion and extension of your hips. As you are crab walking forward, the hamstrings are firing to pull you along and keep your hips off the floor. Each step is like a mini hamstring curl that works with the rest of your posterior chain.
- Quadriceps: The muscle on the front of your thigh flexes the knee and hip. The quads will work especially hard if you perform the backward crab walk variation, as they will push you backward as you move.
- Core: Don't think they are less important just because we are 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 during the crab walk. Remember, the higher your hips lift, the harder your core will work.
Does The Crab Exercise Build Muscle?
As we mentioned, the crab walk will not provide the hypertrophy effects that bodybuilding-style resistance training exercises will. It will build total body strength but is more geared toward conditioning and better movement than building muscles.
It won't compete with compound exercises like a squat, deadlift, or bench press, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have a place in your program.
Proper Crab Walk Form
As you crawl on your hands and feet, you're placing the load mostly on your shoulders, triceps, glutes, and hamstrings. The higher you raise your torso toward the ceiling, the harder your core will have to work.
Here's how to properly perform the crab walk exercise.
How to do the Crab Walk Exercise:
- Start by sitting on the ground. Bend your knees and place your feet slightly in front of your knees. Place your hands 2-3 inches behind your shoulders, and make sure your fingers point towards your hips.
- Begin by lifting your hips a few inches off the ground as you press into your hands to push your body away from the floor. Make sure to keep your legs bent and arms straight.
- Now, it's time to coordinate your hand and foot movements. Pick your right foot up and move it forward as you simultaneously move your left hand forward. Repeat this with your left foot and right hand. Focus on controlling the contralateral movement (connecting one side of your body to the other) while you alternate sides for indicated reps or distance.
- Maintain a neutral posture. Throughout the move, you need to make sure you maintain a neutral posture. Keep your shoulder blades retracted and down. Your body is going to want to arch your back and tilt your pelvis. Don't let it.
Crab Walk Mistakes To Avoid
Avoid these common mistakes and use some of these quick tips to help with form.
- Bending Elbows: Remember that the triceps' primary function is to extend the elbow, so during this movement, you must keep your arms locked out the entire time. It's common for the elbows to want to bend during this movement, especially when you get tired. Elbow bending can also be a sign that your hands and wrists are too tight or weak to support the weight placed on them. Make sure to root your hands into the floor and push the ground away as if trying to lift as high as possible.
- Flat Feet: During the crab walk, you want to ensure your heel touches the floor. This will help with hip stability and engage your glutes and hamstrings throughout the movement. Think of hip thrusting yourself up to ensure your glutes are working, and then maintain this position while walking.
- Going Too Fast: If you try to rush through the crab walk to get it done, your form is likely to break down. When starting, it's more important to do as many reps or whatever distance you can with good, slow, and controlled form instead of going fast to get it done. Move slowly and focus on connecting the entire body to help perform this movement.
- Uneven Weight Distribution: One of the main benefits of this exercise is how it connects one side of the body to the other. Sometimes, with imbalances, we begin to shift the way we move without even noticing it. If you find yourself leaning more to one side, slow down and focus on activating the muscles on the other side. Something as simple as feeling more weight in a part of your hand or foot on that side will allow the weight to shift back.
Crab Walk Benefits
By doing the crab walk regularly, you can reap some of these benefits from your workouts. If you want to learn even more, check out the Top 9 Benefits Of Unconventional Training.
1) Improves Upper Body Strength:
This exercise will provide a different type of strength than a bench press as an upper body movement. It will force your delts, lats, triceps, and pecs to stabilize your shoulder during the movement.
The triceps must work extremely hard to lock out the elbow and handle all the force you place on them, along with the shoulders.
2) Full Body Exercise:
This term is often used for combo movements like a lunge and bicep curl. While combo moves like that may seem total body because they work one upper and one lower body muscle, movements like the crab walk are far superior as a full body movement.
In a crab walk, your core must be strong enough to transfer power from the upper to the lower body. Plus, the coordination between the two makes everything stronger as a whole. Remember, your body is a machine and needs to be trained as a whole rather than just tweaking one part at a time.
3) Improve Balance:
Remember the pat your head and rub your tummy trick? That may feel like a coordination challenge, but it has nothing on the crab walk.
Each step requires opposite sides of your body to work together during this animalistic movement. Transferring the weight 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 will have to focus seriously to ensure all these muscles work together.
If you lose focus for a moment, something that is tired, like your triceps or core, might give out on you. Your brain must be fully locked in to concentrate on this movement. This will 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 put in a circuit or by itself and requires no equipment. We are only tackling this one animal movement today, but the beauty of it is that you can perform it anywhere, and you don't require anything.
6) Fun And Unique:
Sometimes, you need a different and fun exercise to bring out the inner child in you. Not only is it fun, but it's also a nice break from the same monotonous strength training exercises that can get boring.
7) Easy Learning Curve:
The crab walk may have many moving parts, but learning it is straightforward and simple. It is easily scalable and can be done by almost anyone. That, combined with the fact that you don't need any equipment, makes this a great option.
8) Improve Shoulder Stability:
As mentioned, your upper body muscles have to work together to stabilize your shoulder during the movement and need to be strong enough to keep you lifted off the ground as you move.
Each step provides a compressive force on the shoulder girdle and helps build the resiliency of the joint so it can handle movement and ensure you don't get injured.
How To Create Crab Walk Variations
There are several ways you can spice up a traditional crab walk. For example, perform the lateral crab walk, which is when you move laterally, requiring you to move the same hand and foot instead of opposite sides. This variation will seriously work your core and glutes!
The banded crab walk is another great option. Simply add a band around your knees before you assume the crab position. Your lower body will have to work extra hard against the resistance!
Clocktower crab walks are another interesting option. To perform this version, you'll stay in one spot, but your body will rotate in a complete circle like the hands on a clock, which will challenge the rotator muscles of your core.
Crab Walk Alternatives
If you're not up for a full crab walk, or you just want to throw some variety in the mix, try these 2 crab walk alternatives.
1) Reverse High Plank:
This plank variation is a great starting point to get your body used to the crab walk position before you start to move. It is a fantastic option for strengthening your posterior chain and is an excellent complement to regular planks. Here's how to do it:
How to do the Reverse High Plank:
- Sit on the ground with your legs straight and heels touching the floor. Place your palms on the ground slightly behind your shoulders 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 regular plank.
- Keeping your arms and legs 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 floor and alternating will prepare your glutes to stabilize during the walking portion of the crab walk.
How to do the Glute March:
- Lie on the ground and bend your legs, placing your feet under your knees with your heels on the floor and your toes lifted. Make sure your arms are resting at your sides for support.
- Keeping your shoulders on the ground, drive through your heels and lift your hips as high as possible while keeping your rib cage relaxed. Hold this position, and this is your starting point.
- Keeping your leg bent at the same angle, lift your right leg off the floor and bring it into your chest as close as possible without letting your hips sag or drop from side to side. Bring the leg back down, and as soon as it touches the floor, lift the left leg and repeat.
- Alternate sides for indicated reps, and make sure your hips stay lifted and your back remains flat.
How To Modify the Crab Walk
For some people, the crab walk can be extremely challenging on their wrists. Stretching your wrists and performing some mobility exercises will be a long-term fix, but you can try using push-up hand grippers to maintain a neutral wrist position in the short term.
There are different ways to modify this move, including using one of the alternatives to ensure your posterior chain is strong enough to hold the position. You can improve muscular strength with those movements before progressing to the crab walk.
How To Make the Crab Walk Harder
If you are looking to make the crab walk harder, you can always add progressive overload concepts. Either try to do more reps, crawl farther, or crawl faster with good form.
On top of that, you could crawl up a hill, change directions, add a band, or insert the crawl into a circuit with other exercises, including weights. Remember, the higher you try to lift your hips and maintain that position, the more you'll keep your core engaged.
Programming the Crab Walk
As a warmup, try doing 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps on each side. And, for conditioning and challenge, try giving yourself a distance, timing how long it takes you to do it, and then trying to break that time.
Crab walks are always a great fit for circuit training or interval workouts. Add them for a timed interval of 1 minute, along with several other exercises. If performing the circuit as a HIIT workout, you can complete this for 1-2 rounds as a finisher or 4-5.
Sample Crab Walk Workout
This great workout we have provided today will be for a full-body day. It will include strength training exercises and appropriate placement for a crab walk after the strength movements have fatigued essential muscle groups.
|
Exercise |
Sets |
Reps |
|
Superset |
|
|
|
Bench Press |
3 |
6 |
|
Lateral Crab Walk |
2 |
15 (per side) |
|
Bulgarian Split Squats |
2 |
10 |
|
Banded Crab Walk |
2 |
10 (per side) |
|
Romanian Deadlifts |
3 |
8 |
|
Clocktower Crab Walks |
2 |
2 |
|
Chin-Ups |
2 |
Fail |
FAQs
Now we'll go over some of the more common questions about crab walks to make sure you have everything covered.
Why are crab walks so hard?
Crab walks are challenging due to the stress on the wrists and shoulders and the full body coordination required to perform the movement. It is not a movement you perform in your everyday life as an adult, so it can be challenging.
What is crab walk exercise good for?
The crab walk is a fantastic conditioning tool and a functional movement for practicing locomotion and coordination.
How long should you crab walk?
Treat it like any other exercise and follow the appropriate sets and reps for your starting level. See how far you can go on your first set, and you'll have a good idea of your starting reps.
Is the crab walk good for the knees?
The crab walk builds your posterior chain as well as your quads. When these things are strong, your knees will thank you.
What is a crab hold exercise?
This exercise is holding the crab walk position as high as possible for time instead of moving forward.
Crab Walk Workouts: Key Takeaways
As the name suggests, the crab walk is an animal-inspired bodyweight exercise with a range of advantages. This unique crawling movement involves being on all fours with your body facing upwards, and it provides benefits such as enhancing upper body strength, fostering full-body coordination, improving balance, and shoulder stability.
It's a versatile exercise that requires no special equipment, making it suitable for various settings. Plus, its simplicity in terms of learning and scalability makes it accessible to a broad range of individuals. Add the crab walk to your sessions for a fun and unique alternative to conventional strength training exercises, and get an element of enjoyment in your fitness routines.
Interested in more animalistic-style exercises? Check out our article on the Bear Crawl! And for those who prefer bodyweight-style training, try our Full Bodyweight Workout To Get You Ripped & Shredded!
Travis Halena
Author