maratoolSpider Crawl
How to do the spider crawl
- Begin in a prone position on the floor. Support your weight on your hands and toes, with your feet together and your body straight. Your arms should be bent to 90 degrees. This will be your starting position.
- Initiate the movement by raising one foot off of the ground. Externally rotate the leg and bring the knee toward your elbow, as far forward as possible.
- Return this leg to the starting position and repeat on the opposite side.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the chest adds pushing force at the shoulder; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.
Every exercise for:AbdominalsChestShouldersTriceps
How this movement works
The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.
Every exercise using:Body only
These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:
- Standing Cable Liftcable
- Supine One-Arm Overhead Throwmedicine ball
- Torso Rotationexercise ball
- Ab Crunch Machinemachine
- Ab Rollout on Knees with Barbellbarbell
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.