We have all heard of ‘pub crawling’ — people drinking in multiple pubs during a single night. Before your excitement levels peak, the phrase was only meant to give an introduction to the slightly more healthier namesake that is trending now — crawling, that is fast catching on among the fitness enthusiasts in the city.
Inspired by the movement of animals and babies, this trend originated in China some time back where people wore gloves and took to crawling in parks and other areas, inviting laughs and admiration in equal measure from netizens. The workout, that is supposed to engage the entire body, is finding takers here as well now. “It is a great fitness trend because it will strengthen your core muscles and improves your agility as well,” says Nitya Hegde, a certified trainer. “It is a fun exercise too and induced quite a few laughs from my group the first time we tried it out. The multi-movement workout build up your legs, chest, shoulder and back muscles,” she adds.
“Crawling is a great form of functional strength training,” says Asher Khader, personal trainer at the The Tribe Fitness Club. “Before we learnt how to walk, we learnt to crawl as toddlers. So crawling is the foundation of walking, that is, our gait pattern. It has been inspired from animal movements and is a primal way of training, variations of which have been around for ages.”
While this exercise, that exhorts one to ‘make the floor their friend’, has caught the fancy of many, others are a bit more cautious in their approach.
“If crawling was the answer to being fit and healthy, humans wouldn’t really need to learn how to walk!” says Shwetambari Shetty, co-founder of The Tribe Fitness Club and Zumba fitness master. “This format has movements that are incorporated in the warm up segment of a functional training and CrossFit class. These movements are certainly engaging a lot of muscle groups and can be considered a decent workout. But only this won’t suffice. Your workout regime must have a good combination of cardio, weight training and flexibility. So one can incorporate these movements in their warm up, but they should not limit their exercise regime to just this.”
This opinion has been echoed by Namrata Purohit. “This trend is very very new and not much study has been done about the benefits of this workout as of now. It can be included along with your usual exercise routine but it is definitely not a substitute for the traditional forms of exercise.”
Voicing her doubts about the sustainability of this trend, Namrata adds, “I am not sure this trend will take off in the long trend. Fitness enthusiasts keep playing with different forms of workouts and try to incorporate newer elements that have an effect on different muscles; a reason why newer exercises keep coming up on a regular basis. Crawling will be in vogue for some time and then it will most likely fade away.” But while it is here, crawling aims at letting people have a bit of fun in their gyms. “Once you have got the hang of the basic crawl, you can move on to more complex movements like bear crawls, inch worms, crab crawls, lizard (spider-man) crawl, etc. It can be done by anyone at any place and requires no equipment,” explains Asher.
Talking about the importance of taking care of yourself while trying out this new fad, Asher adds, “Putting excessive pressure on joints, namely wrists, shoulders, knees and ankles, is something people should avoid. Perform the movements with good form and technique to work muscles and derive maximum benefits from the movement patterns.” There have been a number of trends that have ranged from strange to the downright bizarre — like twerking, running backwards, prancing like a horse and so on. Though crawling is not crazy enough to make it to this list, one needs to see how long it will stay in the minds of fitness enthusiasts.