Animal walk drills for warm up and conditioning

[Eerowest]

hey everyone,

I'm a lifelong martial artist(TKD, bujinkan, boxing, capoeira and I just recently compiled a big list of different animal walk exercises (10+) for warm-up and conditioning which can be very helpful for overall fitness and martial arts.

If you have any questions, please let me know. If it isn't helpful, at least it should be entertaining

 

[drop bear]

We were run through a few of those by a fitness guy we had in recently. Good stuff. But they have to be done right. Which is being done on the video as far as I can tell.

 

[geezer]

Some seriously cool movements, but I wonder what their long term effects on your body would be.

...Or maybe I'm just jealous? Age, injuries, and genetics have left me with severely limited range of motion in my knees and ankles. I can only imagine being able to do some of that stuff. I love watching my 17-year-old son effortlessly drop into seiza position. Even when I was that age, and stretching daily, seiza was impossible for me.

 

[drop bear]

Some seriously cool movements, but I wonder what their long term effects on your body would be.

...Or maybe I'm just jealous? Age, injuries, and genetics have left me with severely limited range of motion in my knees and ankles. I can only imagine being able to do some of that stuff. I love watching my 17-year-old son effortlessly drop into seiza position. Even when I was that age, and stretching daily, seiza was impossible for me.

OK. As we just had the exercise guy in. I will give you his take on it.

It has to be done properly and it is a process. So if you can't do the exercise with the correct form. Then you need to do stepping stone exercises to build up to it.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Cool. I use versions of some of these as warmups for my class sometimes. I see some variations I haven't tried before. I may have to give those a shot.

 

[Koshiki]

Some very cool stuff there, thanks for sharing. You can never have too many exercises, right?

 

[kuniggety]

Cool. I use versions of some of these as warmups for my class sometimes. I see some variations I haven't tried before. I may have to give those a shot.

I think maybe it's a BJJ thing because I've done most of these in my schools too. The chameleon was a cool twist on the "Spider-Man walk" I'm used to. I haven't done any of the scorpions though so it's something I'll have to try out.

@OP: Your triceps are pretty well developed. Is that all body weight exercises or do you do some weight training too? I don't know why but your mix of green and red mats reminded me of the old Zelda dungeons.

 

[Eerowest]

I think maybe it's a BJJ thing because I've done most of these in my schools too. The chameleon was a cool twist on the "Spider-Man walk" I'm used to. I haven't done any of the scorpions though so it's something I'll have to try out.

@OP: Your triceps are pretty well developed. Is that all body weight exercises or do you do some weight training too? I don't know why but your mix of green and red mats reminded me of the old Zelda dungeons.

Mostly calisthenics and bodyweight exercises. I only recently started doing weights, but I see bodyweight movements equally effective as weights.

We were run through a few of those by a fitness guy we had in recently. Good stuff. But they have to be done right. Which is being done on the video as far as I can tell.

Really? I may not do them perfectly, but haven't seen many doing them better haha.

Cool. I use versions of some of these as warmups for my class sometimes. I see some variations I haven't tried before. I may have to give those a shot.

Most of these I learned in martial arts classes, but many of them I innovated on my own (although someone might have came up with similar movements as well).

I also have a similar video on different "monkey walks", which many of them can be effective but many are just for entertainment and fun.

 

[geezer]

OK, now that was even cooler.

 

[Tez3]

...Or maybe I'm just jealous? Age, injuries, and genetics have left me with severely limited range of motion in my knees and ankles. I can only imagine being able to do some of that stuff. I love watching my 17-year-old son effortlessly drop into seiza position. Even when I was that age, and stretching daily, seiza was impossible for me.

I know, I'm much the same.

Dear Eerowest, I hate you. though to be fair I couldn't do those moves when I was young and fit, they do look really good, I like the control doing them too. I'm very jealous, would definitely do them if I could. Very nice posts.

 

[kuniggety]

Mostly calisthenics and bodyweight exercises. I only recently started doing weights, but I see bodyweight movements equally effective as weights.

I think they both have their place. I do mostly calisthenics and body weight exercises too but compound weight exercises such as squat, deadlift, overhead press, bent over rows, and bench press are great at pushing your body to bear more weight, i.e. Build functional strength.

I have a nasty cold right now and so need another day or two of rest but I'm thinking of stringing all of your animal movements (including the second video) into one exercise doing each movement for about a minute. I think it sounds like a great calisthenic workout.