Bear Crawl Bodyweight Exercise

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The Bear Crawl bodyweight exercise has been around for years. It is one of the many “animal themed” conditioning exercises used by boot camp instructors, martial arts teachers and sports coaches to get their students in shape and encourage fat loss via burning a ton of calories in a short period of time.

Here is the straight up vanilla version of the bear crawl exercise done by a client of mine:
Basic Bear Crawl

Some of the key points to the bear crawl bodyweight exercise:
1. Keep your weight evenly distributed over the legs and arms. Sometimes when people get tired they will put all their bodyweight onto their legs and just slid their arms along. This robs the upper body of all the great muscular stimulus.

2. Keep a speed you are comfortable with. If you go too fast and your shoulders and arms give out you will lose teeth as you crash into the floor face first.

3. Take it slow and keep a natural wrist position. If you do too much or angle your hands in an awkward way, you will get sore wrists. Work to the point of “challenge” and then back off so the tendons and ligaments can rest. THEN COME BACK STRONGER!

The Bear Crawl Exercise In A Workout Routine:

Here I’m having a little more fun with the bear crawl by throwing in another great bodyweight exercise we all know. PUSHUPS. What I do here is a few pushups in each corner of the room and join the corners together by doing the Bear Crawl between them.

Bear Crawl With Pushups

A Simple Shoulder And Chest Bodyweight Exercise Workout Routine:

Using the four corners of the room:
First Round: 20 pushups in each corner with Bear Crawls to each corner
Rest 30 Seconds
Second Round: 15 pushups in each corner with BACKWARDS Bear Crawls to each corner
Rest 30 Seconds
Third Round: 5 clapping pushups in each corner with SIDEWAYS Bear Crawls to each corner (alternating sides each length).

Here is a variation on the bear crawl bodyweight exercise that some call “The Panther”

The video demonstration is done by our jiujitsu and MMA conditioning coach Derek Tisdale. Derek teaches in our personal training membership section.

Have you used the bear crawl in any cool bodyweight workout routines? If so, let us know how in the comments below.