The Best Strength Exercise You're Not Doing

Categories: Blog Mar 18, 2015

Many people are often looking for the "best" exercise to get stronger. There are many different exercises that work different aspects of strength and strengthen different parts of your body. However, there is one exercise most people don't even know about that will help any person, any age, in any condition, get amazingly strong, with no external equipment, that can be done anytime, anywhere. It's so good in fact, that I (and others) have used this exercise to train for and achieve what some call an amazing feat of bodyweight strength  - the One Arm One Leg Push Up.

What is this "magical" exercise?

Before I tell you about it, let me tell you what it does for you.

If I told you there was one exercise which literally glued all the pieces of your body together and made them work the way they were designed work, and challenged your heart and lungs simultaneously (depending on the variation you used) and was a literal one stop shop for strength training and cardiovascular training, Would you be interested in knowing more about it?

I sure was. Which is why I still keep this exercise as a major part of my strength training and conditioning arsenal.

One of the major benefits of this particular exercise is it's ability to make the shoulders work the way they are designed. It teaches all the muscles that make up the shoulder joint to work in harmony with each other. One such muscle group is the rotator cuff, which is often injured as a result of poor posture, poor exercise technique, and poor exercise programming. The rotator cuff is particularly important because it stabilizes the shoulder while the arm moves freely in the shoulder socket. Because I have had rotator cuff injuries before, this particular exercise is a Godsend for me, and keeps my shoulders healthy and strong.

It also strengthens the rest of the muscles of the upper body and the arms, including the hands and wrists.

One of the other benefits of this "magic" exercise is that it works to restore your body's natural posture, which is often degraded by the hours of sitting we do each day. Posture is critically important because the rest of your body's ability to move efficiently is based on a large part, the relationship of your head to the rest of your body. Poor posture is characterized by a forward head, slouched shoulders, and a rounded upper back. As a result, you often see that as the arms hang down by the side of the body, they are internally rotated so that the palms are facing behind the body, instead of facing the sides of the body.

This reduces your ability to put your arms straight up over your head and reduces your shoulders natural mechanics. Many times if you can get your arms straight up over your head, you will compensate by arching your lower back, which increases the stresses on your lumbar spine, which in turn can lead to a potential injury.

So we can agree that any exercise that reverse those negative postural affects would be a good thing, right?

But, as they say on late night TV, there's more!

This particular exercise also activates and trains the deep core stabilizers - the muscles that that stabilize the spine and pelvis, which is vitally important to protect the spine, transfer force correctly throughout the body, and strengthen your entire body from the inside out. Think of this as true core training.

And finally, this particular exercise "opens" the hips, helping you recover lost mobility, from sitting on your butt all day long, and ties the hips and the shoulders together via the core, retraining your gait pattern - walking.

Ok, enough hype - what is this amazing exercise, that should come in a bottle or as a gimmicky machine and sold on late night TV by bikini clad women and chiseled Adonises?

You probably won't believe it, but it's the Backward Crawl.



For beginners, the Backward Baby Crawl is an amazing form of gentle strength training I've personally used for years as a form of active recovery from my traditional strength training.

It's performed the opposite way you Crawl - the feet become the hands and the hands become the feet. You reach with your feet and push with your hands. It's that pushing with the hands that makes this so powerful.

For people who want a challenge, there's the Backward Leopard Crawl, which for me, has been key for restoring my body from hip and abdominal injuries (especially when going uphill - Ouch!).

And when you're ready for the creme de la creme of "advanced" training, there's the Backward Spider-Man Crawl.

How do you implement Backward Crawling into your own training?

Here are several ways:

1. Start easy - with Backward Baby Crawling - and put it at the beginning of your workout as part of the warm up.

2. Use the crawling as a stand alone workout on your off days. (This is the major way I use it.)

3. Use it between sets - do a set of your traditional exercise - then do a set of Backward Crawling.

4. Use it as a cool down or "finisher."
- Put it at the end of your workout with Backward Baby Crawling.
- Use it for "MetCon" - and do Backward Leopard or Spider-Man Crawling.

5. Use it every day or just several days a week.

Just remember to start slowly and allow your body time to adapt.

And if you doubt the power of Backward Crawling, take it for a spin - put it into your program and take it for a hard test drive. That's what I did. Like me, I'm pretty sure you will be more than pleasantly surprised with the increased results in your strength.

 

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