Crawling has been the apex of my strength training this month

I attended the Original Strength Foundations Part 1 workshop in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina 6-7 December 2014 to learn from Tim Anderson, Geoff Neupert, and Dani Almeyda. I have been crawling, rocking, rolling, and nodding ever since. I did not expect to suspend all my kettlebell, deadlifting, and pull-up work, but have. Instead I am completing 30 to 60 minutes per day of “OS work.”

My new normal is to spend 30 minutes rocking, rolling, nodding, and playing around on a gymnastics mat in my living room mid-morning and then skipping to the park from my house in the early afternoon to practice Spiderman crawling until I am worn out. Then I come home, skipping as much as I can and walking the rest of the way.

It turns out that Spiderman crawling is much easier outside than it is in my house. I am actually crawling over 10-11 seams in the sidewalk every time I crawl in the park and when I timed my last crawl today it lasted just over 1 minute. That means I am up to 7 minutes of Spiderman work per day. I feel like I have been doing lots of pull-ups, push-ups, and presses! I am pretty sure my cardiovascular system is improving because I have not been getting winded so regularly in years.

Skipping is a deceptively difficult practice. I pick out landmarks and make myself skip through the landmark before I slow to a walk/march to catch my breath and let my legs rest.

I have a harness and 100 pounds of chain coming and plan to spend time marching and crawling dragging the chain when it arrives. I discovered in training that I found Spiderman crawling easier when loaded than unloaded. The weight changes my balance and lets me use my arms less and legs more so that crawling becomes surprisingly easy… at least for a while.

I am going back to the Foundations Part 2 workshop 21-22 February 2015. My fitness goal is to be able to Spiderman crawl continuously for 5 minutes by then. I crawled for 2 minutes continuously in my house 2 weeks ago and feel as if I am making rapid progress. I am going to increase my capacity by adding 1 minute segments to my daily work until I am doing 10 minutes of Spiderman crawling per day.

The reason I am doing what I am doing is that I believe this is the most direct route for me to become optimally functional physically and seriously strong.