Life Health Fitness

Lifting weights and running on the treadmill is not the only way you can get your weekly doses of strength and cardio. Is a pound just a pound? When it comes to weight training, Yes!!!. And who cares how you get your heart rate up, just get it up!!  Here is how. Bear Crawls.

Doing the bear crawl is that exercise that will kill two birds with one stone. All you need is your bodyweight. Bear crawls benefits anyone who needs to workout. They can be performed anywhere, even in a small apartment or hotel room. Push your furniture out the way and lets start crawling like a bear.

What Is Bear Crawls and Why Are They A Good Workout?

Bear crawls are a pivotal part of the functional fitness program that focuses on the maximum usage of quadrupedal and ground movements to strengthen your entire body. This exercise engages almost every muscle joint of the human upper body making it the perfect compound exercise without using weights.

If you are bored with squats, sprints, curls, and presses, it’s time to move to bear crawls. If one has to define bear crawls in the simplest terms, it would be ideal to say that bear crawls are somewhat of an advanced version of a moving plank. Much like the plank, a bear crawl also engages the core muscles, but since it also involves moving, a bear crawl forces the performer to use their core more intensely to maintain balance.

Bear crawls have witnessed a sudden surge in popularity. Suddenly, almost all knowledgeable trainers and coaches have jumped on the bear crawl endorsement bandwagon. Why? Primarily because the fitness devotees are being seen making a deliberate shift towards full-body and functional exercises that prepare the body for day-to-day tasks. Doing the bear crawl is a cheap way to get a good workout.

What Muscles Are Used in a Bear Crawl?

The bear crawl is primarily a strength- and mobility-enhancing exercise and thus effectively uses almost every single muscle group in the body. Abdomen, shoulder, chest, glutes, and legs are the primary muscles used during this exercise.  In fact, you are using all these muscles at the same time.  It also increase joint mobility in the hips, wrists, spine, ankles and the knee.

A Step-by-Step Guide to How to Do a Bear Crawl?

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Doing a bear crawl is not complicated. But it is very challenging. The critical thing to remember is maintaining the right posture to maximize the movement pattern. However, the wrong position while doing bear crawls can easily lead to injuries.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to do a bear crawl. Before you attempt the bear crawl make sure you warm up your muscles and stretch for 5 -10 mins before attempting.

1. Start in a crawl position. Your hands should be directly underneath your shoulders, and your knees should be placed under your hips. You will be on all fours just like a bear.

2. Stabilize your spine and elongate your back. The key idea is to engage the abdominal muscles to their maximum capacity. Do not attempt exercise until you are body is stable.

3. While maintaining stability slowly lift your knees off the floor, stay on your toes, while still in the crawl position. Move out your right arm, left leg and starting crawling. Knees should not touch the floor. Start crawling.

4. Cover whatever your distance you can cover comfortably and rest.

5. Repeat as many times as you can

How to Make Bear Crawls More Advanced?

Once the basic move becomes easy peasy, now its time to advance to more challenging steps. Now try these advanced versions.

1. Go Faster. Or for a longer distance. Get competitive and race a friend.

2. Pull something by securing a backpack to your back or a rope attached to a heavy object. Wear a weighted vest.

3. If you think you have perfectly mastered the basic bear crawl, it’s time to move to the next step. Instead of doing a basic bear crawl, make it tougher by simply lifting one hand and the opposite leg off the ground. Be sure to maintain crawl position

4. A spiderman crawl is another variation of the standard bear crawl which can be performed by bending your chest closer to the ground while crawling.

5. Don’t have a lot of time? Bear crawls are ideal for High-Intensity Interval Training Crawl for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds. Repeat for about 20 mins duration no more than two times per week.

6. Add it to your circuit training. For example , Burpees, Bear Crawl, Jumping, Jacks, Squats. Rest after the first set and Repeat four times.

7.  Do backward bear crawls

What Are the Benefits of Bear Crawls?

If you have been looking for reasons to include bear crawls in your routine, here are a few:

1. Bear crawls help you build total body strength. While most exercises focus on a particular group of muscles, the bear crawl is one of those few exercises that use almost all muscle groups. It forces your core to work harder, which makes it an excellent strength-building exercise.

2. As previously mentioned, bear crawls engage more than one joints. The work of these joints is pivotal to ensuring perfect stability while doing a bear crawl. Thus, this exercise also enhances muscle coordination and mobility.

3. Crawling around without the support of your knees on the floor will undoubtedly get your heart rate up. You can even go faster and turn it into a high-intensity workout.

Getting your weekly dose of exercise should not be difficult if you include bear crawls in your routine. All you need to do is get on all fours and start crawling like a bear.

If you do not want to break a nail or get callouses from the heavy metal of barbells and dumbbells, then sandbags might be just what you need to add to your resistance training routine. To fight diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, the American Heart Association recommends resistance training at a minimum of 2 times per week. All you need is to set aside 30 mins a day for two days. You can split the 30 mins into 2 15 mins sessions and use sandbags to make it more tolerable and fun.

Sandbags have been around for donkey years by those desiring to push the limits of their strength and toughness. Experts now believe that training with unstable loads like sandbags can improve strength in innumerable functional ways.

An unstable load is anything that shifts during training or weight lifting. You have probably heard that you have to maintain stability when training and weight lifting. New research from a University in Norway has busted that myth. Instability during exercise helps to stimulate muscle movement and growth in unique ways. However, always stay safe.

With stable training, for instance, dumbbells and kettlebells, the only growth you will be from the heaviness of the weight. That could be the reason why it takes so long to see significant results when you start going to the gym. A little movement of the muscles due to the instability of the weights can shift the scales of balance in your favor.

Unstablize Your Routine With Sandbags

Sandbag training will jolt your body into change. It has the potential to burst past the plateau stage in your muscle gain endeavors. The stagnation happens when your muscles do the same movements over and over again. It is your body’s way of saying ” I am bored now . What’s next”. Listen to your body and change it up. You have to change up your routine to keep progressing.

Admittedly, it can be hard to find a sandbag in a commercial gym. You could buy or make your own, or visit a boxing club. Training sandbags usually resemble a duffle bag. At first sight, they might not appear to be a challenging training tool, but in the real sense, they are instrumental at both fat blasting and muscle gain.

The sand in the bag is continuously shifting during training. When you lift the sandbags, all your muscles including those of the legs, core, and back are engaged in trying to stabilize the bag. You will get shredded in the shortest time.

Some sandbag designs feature handles for gripping. These will enable you to lift the bags in a different range of ways. By experimenting with the various forms of lifting the sandbag, your muscles get engaged in explosive ways.

Features of Sandbags

The bags are designed to help fitness aficionados to jack up their strength, raw power and build endurance. The sandbags come with everything you will need for the unstable rough training. Sand is the only thing you will need. You can make your own or buy one, either way when not in use, you can slide it under bed.

Tough Outer Shell

Training sandbags are made for rough handling and merciless drills. The material is tough, and you will often notice belted reinforcements all around. The bags may feature triple stitched, heavy-duty and cross stitched fabrics. The zipper also has to be incredibly strong to keep the sand on the pack during the training.

Easy Access Handles

These are natural inclusions to improve their ease of use. The grips allow you to exert your maximum force, stability, and power without faltering during training. There could be six; more or fewer handles to provide comfortable and firm grip options.

Removable Inner Bags

As mentioned earlier, training sandbags often feature smaller inner sandbags. These are removable, and they are the ones that you fill up with sand. This feature will enable you to adjust the weight and regulate the workout intensity to match your stamina.

Benefits of Sandbag Training

The core idea behind sandbag training is motion functionality. Regular weight lifting is a slow process of building muscle because if the minimal muscle movements. Sandbag workouts mimic daily body motions such as moving a bag of grocery, lifting a bag laundry, or lifting a child to your shoulders. Countless workouts are possible.

Both beginners and experienced sandbag trainers can appreciate the different exercises and intensity levels enabled by sandbags. You can manage a wide range of workouts including lunges, deadlifts, squats, presses, and throws. The adjustable weighted bags will allow you to push your limits regardless of your fitness levels. Unlike dumbbells and barbells, you can easily add or remove resistance by adding or removing weights. Let me explain. Most bag have individual weight sacs that can be removed. For instance, there can be 5 10lb sacs.  You can add and remove the sacs to desired weight.

Sandbags can be added to some of the exercises you are already doing. You do not need to learn anything new. But there are also sandbag specific exercises that you can add to your routine.

Below are five examples of sandbag workouts you can try.

Bear Hug Squats

All it entails is hugging the length of the sandbag on your chest and proceeding with squats. The exercise strengthens your back, legs and core muscles.

Sandbag Push-Ups

This is a type of raised push-ups that maximum pressure on your abs, core, and chest. Ensure to maintain a flat and neutral back as you lower and increase in the push-up position.

Sandbag Thrust

Sandbag thruster is an advanced form of sandbag squats. In this case, when you lower yourself in the squat position with the sandbags in arms, straighten back up fast and thrust the lift bag upwards over your head. Hold for about three seconds before reversing to the squat position. This workout is good for the glutes and shoulders.

Sandbag Row

Some bags have handle therefore you can do rows. The sandbag row workout entails maintaining a neutral spine as you pull the sandbag towards you in a bent position, hinging at the hips. It builds your back and core strength.

Sandbag Shouldering

This movement relies on your hips to lunge the sandbag over your shoulder. In that motion, do not round your back or use force in your arms. Bend at the knees, hinge at the hips and grab the sandbag then drive it over your shoulders. Drop it back down and repeat on the other shoulder.

Builds Dynamic Resistance

Unlike when working with weights these simple exercises are very challenging. You will be battling with balance and the shifting movement of the sand in the bag. Such dynamic strength can come in handy for anyone.

Brutally Builds Your Core

Sandbags movements are merciless on your abdominal muscles. Be it carrying, shouldering, thrusting or squatting, each of these exercises at least engages one of the core muscles and hips. That is where the overall strength of the body lies.

Real Life Strength

Functional training or strength training is much more effective with movements that are more like actual life movements. Such is the kind of raw power that will come handy in your day to day activities when you to pick up something off the floor or reach for an item on the top shelf.

Workout Everything Including The Fingers

Can you live without a good grip? The muscles in your hands and fore are activated when you grip with the bag without handles. Due to this activation of muscle, sandbags helps to improve your grip.

If you want to unlock all your movement potential, then add sandbags to your routine. Sandbags are a versatile tool that you should at your arsenal of equipment for optimal workout. The act of stabilization as you manage the weights uses every little muscle on your body. It is uncomfortable but feels good to your core.

The fitness industry is like fashion. There is  always an old something that makes a come back or recycled as something new. Because of this,  you can never get bored. Regardless of your fitness level or your goals, there is something for everyone even if you workout at home or the park. You do not need to join a gym to get your recommended dose of aerobic and resistance training. The latest fitness craze to get you moving and grooving is Functional Training.

What Is Functional Training?

Squatting down to pick up your child or getting on all fours to scrub the floor are examples of functional movement. In other words you are moving for a purpose and this is what Functional Training teaches you how to perform effectively.

Functional training focuses on movement patterns that are similar to our activities of daily living. These are activities that we engage on a day to day basis. For instance walking,  jogging, sprinting, running, jumping, pushing, lifting, pulling, bending, turning, twisting, starting, stopping, standing, lunging and climbing. A common aspect of these activities is that they involve smooth, rhythmic motions that helps you get the job done without hurting yourself.

Functional training is a form of resistance exercise that focuses on improving the overall strength to directly enhance normal body movements. It goes beyond building the capacity of specific muscles and muscle groups to focus on building coordination between the muscular and the nervous systems. Simply put, the core goal of functional exercises is to condition your body to perform your daily activities more efficiently and effectively. It helps you achieve this by transferring the gains in muscle strength to enhance the performance of your daily movements through the neuromuscular system. As such, functional training exercises your muscles in a similar way your body uses them in everyday life. These exercises focus more on practical full body workouts than weightlifting to target specific muscle groups. The end result is an overall strength and endurance enabling you to optimally function throughout the day.

Functional Training Origin

Though this form of physical activity has gained popularity more recently, it has been in use for decades. Physical therapists have been using them since World War 1 to rehabilitate patients with movement disorders. Functional training is now increasingly penetrating the fitness arena because it involves various exercises that target the core body muscles, enabling people to perform their daily activities more effectively.

Most of the modern fitness ideologies are also currently focusing on function. This has also resulted in the development of new training equipment such as battling ropes, slosh pipes, sandbags, suspension trainers and kettlebells.

How Does It Differ from Others Forms of Exercise?

The conventional fitness disciplines such as powerlifting, bodybuilding, and others lay emphasis on exercise techniques that serve specific objectives such as achieving muscular or a defined physique. These use machine-based exercises that target specific muscles and joints in a controlled environment to stimulate optimal muscle growth.

What sets functional training apart from the rest is the way it targets your body. The exercises lend themselves to the mindset of mastering a skill or completing a task rather than just doing a specific number of reps and sets. It is both an art and a science that involves the transfer of strength gained to the normal body movements.

Success in this area requires coordination between the training movement and the actual performance movement. This is because the brain section that is responsible for muscular movement, thinks in terms of whole motions, and not the movement of specific muscles. Thus, by making the training motions similar to your daily movements, the brain is able to transfer this energy to your daily routine with much ease.

The traditional exercises do not effectively transfer performance from the gym to the real world. However, this does not mean that you should avoid them completely. The non-functional exercises can also add value to the functional ones. For instance, they can be used to strengthen a “weak link” which could be a joint or a muscle that is getting in the way of proper function. By restoring the right muscle balance, the individual can effectively and safely do functional activities.

Benefits of Functional Exercise

Increases The Ease of Everyday Life

For normal people, the benefits of functional fitness usually out-weigh those of conventional training. Functional exercises have numerous benefits because they can be applied to our daily lives. They are designed to assist you to carry out your routine body movements with much ease. For instance, lunges which are a functional exercise come in handy when climbing a steep hillside.

You will also notice that climbing up the stairs will get easier with time, or even moving things around the house. Functional training simply increases the ease of your everyday life by developing muscle and body stability, boosting muscle strength and endurance, and improving the overall function of your body.

Saves Time

Functional training is also efficient in terms of time taken to reach your fitness goals, whether weight loss or even strength gain. This is because the exercises focus on completing full-body movements and also targets multiple muscle groups resulting in a boost in calorie expenditure. Given that it incorporates a wide range of movements and activities such as dancing, your fitness journey can also turn out to be fun.

Improved Posture, Balance and Eliminates Joint Pains

Functional training works on the full body by targeting multiple muscles and joints. Because functional exercises are generally not stabilized, it forces small muscle groups to grow so that they can support the larger ones in terms of balance and posture. This results in equilibrium throughout the body in terms of energy, posture, strength, and balance. The exercises also eliminate the imbalance in the body and cushions the joints; effectively eliminating the sources of chronic pain.

To Summarize

Functional exercises are suitable for beginners and pro athletes alike since they involve full body movements that target multiple muscles simultaneously. It is a great starting point for anyone at any fitness level since it implements low impact exercises. Athletes too can benefit from these exercises by increasing the intensity to train for strength, speed, power, flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, muscle endurance, or even fat loss. The benefits of functional exercise are far reaching and wide because they are designed to assist you to carry out your routine body movements with much ease.