Train Your Gait...But Why?

If anyone has been in the gym for any period of time, we've all heard the term "core training." Yet even knowing that, we ignore it unless we get an injury or want abz. There's more to it than just your abz. Your core is everything from the bottom of your armpits to your glutes. It's at the center of you, and the stronger it is, the better off you will be.

Anything you want to do, from numbers in the gym to running around outside, is aided by your core. Any injuries can be prevented by having a strong core.

So knowing this, people get on the ground and start hammering crunches. Nice. Maybe they add in some bridges too. Also nice. But is there another way to train it? Is that the way we trained it in the first place? Is that the way we did it as kids? No.

"In the first place? We weren't doing sit ups as kids. What gives?"

Allow me to explain.

We always see kids running around, falling, getting back up, stooping, squatting no problem and assume it's "just because they're kids."

But you have to remember that all kids started out as weak little babies. In order to join the ranks of the walking and sprinting, they had to do a lot of gentle "strength training" to get there. It's really a lot of core training. They also have big heads too, forcing their core to work even harder. But all of the work they do (from flapping their arms and legs on their backs, tummy time and crawling) is strengthening their center.

When all of your core is strong, (your glutes, lats, and yes, your abs), it helps keep you stable. Then your limbs are free to move instead trying to do the stabilization work. When you do enough reps, your body will know how to fire those muscles to hold you in place so that you're free to play.

Why should I care? I just want to get jacked!

You should care.

You ever get all the cues to "squeeze your glutes!" "tense your abs!" before you pick up something heavy? Why do we have to do that? It's almost as if your body has forgotten to fire your muscles automatically, so now we have to think about it. Wouldn't it be nice if your body knew to fire those muscles up without you thinking about it? Hm…

Another benefit is posture. You abs being "on" helps protect your lower back. Your glutes and upper back being "on" helps keep you upright and not slouched over. Good luck pressing something heavy overhead when your back looks like a question mark.

And to use two non-gym examples of people who step into the gym and destroy it, look at middle or high school kids and general athletes. Kids around that age are closer to their Original Strength than adults are. Then, when I say "general athletes" I mean the sprinters, field athletes (throwers) and football players. They're monsters in the gym without even caring about it. Why? I think it's because they spend so much time doing things that are hard with their own bodies.

If crawling is the beginning stage of your gait pattern, then sprinting is the end goal. It's the advanced version of the gait pattern. It's no easy feat, and you can only do it at max speed for a few seconds at a time.

So if you're convinced that your gait pattern is important, let's move on.

But what do you do? Do you start doing track warmups and sprinting every morning? As awesome as that would be, the answer is…not yet. And please don't start sprinting cold so you don't pull a hamstring.

You start gently. You start with Original Strength

O.S. to Rehab Your Gait Pattern

If you couldn't tell by now, we're going to use Original Strength to work on your gait pattern again. The reasons are many, but I'll list a few.

• The movements are gentle. You can regress them down to any level.

• Since the moves are gentle, you can (and should) do them most days to solidify the movement patterns.

• You can use different gait movements (not just crawls) to spot any holes in your development.

• It forces the gait pattern to be used. Walking is supposed to be done with all 4 limbs (swinging your arms), but people may not do it properly and fake it. You can't fake using all 4 limbs when you crawl.

Now, as awesome as crawling is, you're going to have to do your own "homework" and see if you have any holes in your strength. Maybe your abs are weak, needing deadbugs. Maybe your glutes are weak, needing bird dogs.

Let's go over all the variations.

What to Do

I decided to split this up into "ground work" and "feet work." The end goal is to be on your two feet after all, but starting on the ground with crawls and other things can help fire your core into action.

Ground work:

• General resets - Lie on the ground. Breathe deep, nod your head up and down, side to side, rock back and forth on your hands and knees, roll (a lot of rolls) from your belly to back with each limb. Breathing, nodding, rocking and rolling are 4 of the 5 patterns in the human developmental sequence. Feel what's sticky and work on those more. You can do this any time you want. Pay attention to the rolling because your spine is made to twist and it's going to do a lot of that when you're off to the races and sprinting.

• Deadbugs - Now comes the contra-lateral (opposite arm and leg) stuff. Lie on your back. Lift your legs up with your tailbone off the ground. Just holding this is hard enough. Now you're going to work on dropping the opposite arm and leg down to the ground (or as far as you can go without letting the tailbone sag) and bring them back up. You can bend the legs to make it easier. This will fire your dear abs up without you having to think about tensing them. That's exactly what we want to train. Doing about 20 to a max of 50 reps is plenty on these as maintenance.

• Bird Dogs - If deadbugs fire up the front, bird dogs fire up the back. If you do these, it's an instant posture fix. Your head is up, your arms have to come up, forcing your shoulders to engage. Your legs extend, forcing your glutes to engage. Again, maintaining 20-50 reps is good enough.

• Baby crawling - Now it's time to tie your body together. Just as it says, you crawl like a baby on your hands and knees. You can do these for anywhere from 5-10 minutes. Keep your head up. Don't laugh at this. Hitting that 10 minute mark will feel like an eternity…until it's easy. Once it is easy, it's time to make it harder…

• Harder crawling - You can now make the crawling harder/better/more awesome by elevating to just your hands and feet. Leopard crawls look like baby crawls as the knees track inside the arms. Spider-Man crawling has the knees tracking outside the arms.

"How much of this should I do?"

I can't answer that for you.

If you have a lagging part of your body (front side, backside, rotation etc) then spend time doing the moves that will help. An easy scientific way is to just try all of this and see what's hard for you. Then do more of it until it's not hard. Yay science!

Now let's move on to being upright, since that's our goal anyway.

Feet work:

• Cross Crawling - This is crawling, but standing up. The goal here is to march opposite arms and legs slowly. You also have to touch opposite arm to the opposite leg. You can regress this by tapping your hand to your thigh, all the way up to your elbow to your knee. It actually helps your brain because it's connecting both sides of your brain together each time your tap opposite arm and leg.

• Marching - Just like the name says. We're starting to pick up speed here with opposite arm and leg. Keep your arms at a 90 degree angle the best you can and land on the balls of your feet. You can do this standing still or for a few yards at a time moving forward. Now we're starting to do some sprint warmups!

• Skipping - These are just like a march but with a little hop. There are a few variations of these (A, B and C). Play around with these for a certain distance.

• Sprint! - Now it's the real stuff. Once you've gotten all limber with all of the above work, try build ups where you start slow and pick up speed. How fast? 50%. Yes, just 50% people. That's fast enough. Don't go full speed until it's been a few weeks, and progress slowly with 50%-75% then 75%-100%. Your body will thank you.

Now Show Me the Meaning of Haste

With all of the above, you're ready to be a sprinting machine.

You can do the Original Strength stuff as often as you want. For the sprinting work, just keep it anywhere from 1 to 3 times per week. That's enough as a busy adult. Prepare for the best bodyweight fat burner on the planet and welcome back to the ranks of the apex predator.

Thanks for reading!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.