Bear crawl: how to do it, the versions, and what little research there is

The bear crawl is walking on your hands and toes with your knees held a few inches off the floor and your hips low. A mountain climber moves its legs while the plank stays in place; in the bear crawl the whole plank moves across the floor. It needs no equipment and a few metres of space.

This page covers the steps, the versions, what the closest research measured, the faults, and the sets. The research is thin, and the page says so where it matters. The still position the crawl starts from is on how to do a plank.

How to do a bear crawl

1. Start on your hands and knees, hands under your shoulders, knees under your hips.
2. Tuck your toes and lift your knees an inch or two off the floor. Keep your back flat and your head in line with your spine. This is the bear hold.
3. Step one hand forward a short distance, and the opposite foot with it.
4. Step the other hand and foot forward. Keep the steps small enough that your hips stay level and your knees stay low.
5. Crawl 5 to 10 steps, then crawl backward the same way, or turn around.

The opposite-hand-and-foot step is the usual cue and a practical default. In a lab study of healthy adults crawling on their hands and feet, people used a wide range of limb coordination, diagonal and lateral.¹ If one pattern keeps your hips level, use it.

Versions: easier, harder and different

• Easier: keep your knees on the floor and crawl on hands and knees, or hold the bear position for a few seconds without moving. The hands-and-knees position is the start of the bird dog.
• Bear hold: stay in the hover for 10 to 20 seconds, breathing normally.
• Shoulder taps: from the hold, lift one hand and tap the opposite shoulder, then switch. Your hips shouldn't rock.
• Backward and sideways: the same steps in another direction; go slowly, because you can't see where you're heading.
• Harder: a longer distance, a slower pace with a pause on each step, or timed rounds, as a finisher like mountain climbers or burpees.

What the bear crawl works

As a description of the movement, not a measurement: your shoulders and arms hold your weight the whole time, your trunk keeps your hips level, and your legs and hips move the feet. The research below suggests how much the arms and shoulders get in crawling positions.

What the closest research found

A PubMed search for this page found no study that measured the muscle activity, energy use or training effects of the bear crawl. The three records that name it use it as one exercise in a larger program or as a test movement in a sensor study. Every number below is about all-fours movement in general, and two of the abstracts don't say whether the knees were off the floor, so none of it is a finding about the bear crawl.

• Energy use. In 12 participants (the abstract doesn't say who they were or how long the bout lasted), quadrupedal walking on a treadmill raised total energy expenditure by 4.15 kcal per minute over upright walking at the same speed, and raised breathing and heart rates. The abstract says the exercise mainly activated the upper-limb muscles and the gluteus maximus. That is a measure of effort, not a claim about body weight.²
• Muscle activity. In 20 adults, eight all-fours movements from a quadrupedal-movement training system produced moderate to very high peak muscle activity (muscle activity, not growth). The abstract's averages were 67% of a maximal contraction for the deltoid (the medial deltoid was measured), 63% for the lats and 48% for the biceps, against 46%, 29% and 23% in the push-up, and 42% for the biceps femoris, one of the hamstrings, against 18% in the squat. It lists the push-up as higher for the triceps and pectoralis and reports no differences in the rectus femoris or the rectus abdominis. The abstract prints a significance statement that contradicts itself, so this page doesn't call any difference significant.³

Read together: crawling on all fours asks a lot of the arms and shoulders and some of the hips. Both are short tests in small samples, and neither can say what weeks of bear crawls would change.

The common faults, and a fix for each

• Hips high. The back rounds and the knees do the work. Lower your hips until your back is flat.
• Knees on the floor. Then it's a hands-and-knees crawl. Lift them an inch or two.
• Long steps. Reaching far tips your weight over the hands. Take short steps.
• Hips swinging side to side. The pace is ahead of your control. Slow down or use the hold.
• Shoulders up around your ears. Push the floor away and keep your neck long.
• Crawling through a sharp or lasting hurt in a wrist or shoulder. Sore, tired arms are normal; if you have pain, an injury or a condition, ask a doctor or a physical therapist.

Sets, rounds and where they go

All of this is practical advice, not a finding.

• Crawls: three or four trips of 5 to 10 steps forward and back, resting 30 to 60 seconds.
• Holds: three holds of 10 to 20 seconds.
• As conditioning: 20 to 30 seconds of crawling with 60 seconds of walking, six times, hard enough that you could say a few words, not a sentence, the effort the HIIT workout uses.
• In a warm-up or a finisher, once or twice a week. After heavy pressing days, your shoulders will tell you whether to hold back; cardio and lifting covers the order.

Common questions

Bear crawl or mountain climbers?

Mountain climbers stay in one place and are usually done fast; the bear crawl travels and is usually done slowly. Neither has been compared with the other in a study found for this page.

How far should I crawl?

Start with 3 to 5 metres each way, which is a hallway. Count steps rather than metres.

Is it a core exercise?

It asks your trunk to keep still while your limbs move, like the core exercises. The closest study's abstract reports no differences in rectus abdominis activity between the all-fours movements and the traditional exercises it compared.³ This page doesn't rank the bear crawl against core exercises.

What if my wrists hurt?

If a sharp or lasting hurt continues, stop and let a doctor or a physical therapist look at it.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

A bear crawl fits almost anywhere; deciding where it goes in a week that already holds lifting and everything else is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in Trainerize, sized to the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: at the end of your next session, crawl five steps forward and five back, four times, and stop each trip when your hips start to rise.