Care To Poke The Bear?

One of the most intense workouts around is not only so simple but takes only 5 minutes to do and it will have you breathing harder like you're ready to die. Great for wrestlers, conditioning enthusiasts and fanatics who just love to find out what they're made of. All you do is simple Bear Crawling.

Now, we're not talking about some little four legged animal move that kids play (although it is fun), you're going to be sprinting or moving as fast as possible for 10 Seconds, rest for 20 Seconds and repeat for a total of 10 Rounds. Done this workout many times and if I had to create a list of brutal sessions, this makes at least top 5. 

What does it really do? It pushes you to work everything with such intensity, your lungs will be screaming louder than a teen camper about to be the next victim of Jason. The idea is to move all 4 limbs in unison and working together synergistically, if you're uncoordinated, you may fall on your face so build up by doing slow sessions without sprinting, just get used to the movement, as you get better, pick up the pace until you can move quickly in all sorts of directions.

Bear Crawls is one of the most basic conditioning exercises that gives you a starting base for building animalistic strength in your arms and legs. Wrestlers have done it forever, football players cringe at it cause every time they do it, at least 3-5 players want to kill their coach and Gymnasts use it as a starting base for building arm and core strength for hand balancing in later stages. Learned about that from my old friend Ed Baran. 

Kids love to mimic animals and as we get older, we phase out of that child like state and become analytical and overthink a bunch of shit. Sometimes injuries have plagued people from going back to that playful state of exercise but if you're in good health, might want to give the move a go. There are several variations you can do but when it comes to the sprints, ass up to the heavens and legs spread out a little wider than shoulder width and take off running. You're using just about every single muscle imaginable and it builds incredible toughness and durability. 

How often should you do this? Depends on your goals but a couple times a week or so should do the trick, seriously who wouldn't want to only train for 5-10 minutes a week? That doesn't mean you don't do other things throughout the rest of the week unless you're so sore you need to recover more. Go for walks, work isometrics, do some band training, hike or whatever, just keep the intensity lower so when those sprint sessions come, you'll be ready to tackle it like the legendary Ray Lewis.

Another great workout that is a favorite of mine is to mark off 5 yards, crawl as fast as you can without falling over, stand up, walk back and repeat for at least 5-10 times to start. When you can get to 20 of these, you're hitting gold. The most I ever did was around 45 but that was really a test of what I'm capable of. You won't most likely go 100% full boar after a certain number so don't always worry about numbers. This workout if I were to do 20 of them, at a good clip took me just under 4 1/2 minutes to complete. It's nasty but it gets the job done if you're short on time. 

Check out some other ideas for Animal Type Movements HERE!!! Be amazingly awesome and go have some fun.   

Animal Conditioning With The Dopa Band

 Finding different ways to train with the Dopamineo Band is turning into a habit and the more I've used it, the stronger and better healed up I've gotten. I can't get enough of it and it's one of my top equipment to promote right now. It is a game changer and I'm testing myself doing hard workouts, methodical and a bit slower, intense, rugged and just plain having the time of my life with it. 

You can do so many exercises with this thing that even with all the instructional videos, there's something to discover. Today was one of those discoveries as I did another test to see where I was at; I did my Animal Dice Game Workout while I had the Band around my waist and went a few rounds. The objective in this workout was to go as far out as possible and repeat as many times for a specific animal so one rep was going as far as you can stretch it. Bear Crawls, Crab Walks, Tiger Crawls, Primate and Frog Jumps; did a total of 60 reps and that was more than enough. Rested when I needed to but my lungs were firing and was feeling it in my legs and my shoulders. Full Body workout that every exercise hit multiple muscle groups.

I would say that was a hell of a conditioning workout that really took that particular Animal Workout to another level. Normally I can go for 20 min or more without much of a rest other than rolling the dice but this was just nasty and because of the resistance, you're fighting a hell of a lot more and it just tortures the muscles more. Although shorter than usual with that workout, I made it count and went as far as my body allowed me. That's the point of training is to work with what's possible and intuitively know when you've had enough.

Wrestlers & Football players have done similar workouts but I don't know about this specific using a dice to come up with a random animal and go hard. They've done Animal style movements forever and there's a good reason why they're incredible for conditioning. Grab a band for yourself and try a few animals and see how you feel. Hell, I'll even throw in a discount for you by throwing in 10% off your order when you use the code POWERANDMIGHT at checkout. Check out the instructionals, find the type of band suited for your size (just like weight classes in wrestling) and have at it. If you want multiple bands, you can get discounted for those as well by customizing your own bundle and use my code for even more of a discount, how bad ass is that? 

Train well, get fit and keep being amazingly awesome. 

Here's another video of doing Duck Walks, these particularly are torturous when you do them for several times going out in a row. 

Animal Documentaries And Their Inspiration To Move Like A Wild Beast

Sometimes, watching TV can be a good thing, especially when it comes to true stories or documentaries. I'm a sucker for a good documentary if it's on Aliens, Baseball, Nature, Serial Killers or Ancient History. It fascinates me whether some of it is a little fabricated or twisted around but there's always some form of truth in there. Nature Docs are one of my favorites and have several in a collection from the Planet Earth Series, Dynasties, the study of Primates, Wolves and others. 

If anything, they inspire me to train like an animal in the wild. Just getting up and crawling, jumping or flat out mimic an animal just for the hell of it. Certain streaming services these days are actually pretty cool especially with Nat Geo on Disney+ or the Nature Docs on Netflix because it's not just trash TV or movies or countless shows but being able to actually learn a thing or two and have some fun in the process. I've seen practically every Nat Geo show on Disney+ from The Wild Series to White Wolves, Primal Survivor and Docs on Animals in America. Every time I watch them, I want to get up and go play as a wild animal.

Animal Docs aren't just to teach the behaviors and seasonal rituals animals have but also showcase the landscapes and homes they build, the bonds they develop, the playful fighting amongst cubs, the way they battle each other and how powerful they can truly be. Would you ever get in the middle of a fight between big horns, tigers, bears, bison or elk? As humans, we're the only species that can take in very close quarters of a fight and live to talk about it most of the time, but if humans were even within 100 yards of a fight between testosterone fueled wild animals, you'd be lucky to even still be breathing. Imagine two fully grown bears that weigh up to 1500 lbs at best just whaling on each other, would you even be dumb enough to get within 50 feet of them? You would either have to have nerves of steel or just have some kind of Death Wish.

The closest I've seen to a fight between animals was wild deer outside my garage window and it wasn't even a full on battle, just messing with each other, if it got out of hand, glass shattering and walls broken would be inevitable. I've also seen a teenage moose strolling in the backyard once and it made a normal size horse look small. It's incredible what we are able to observe but even more incredible to develop our bodies using natural resources to build strength, athleticism, stamina, flexibility, explosiveness, conditioning and other major attributes using our own bodyweight, pushing/lifting rocks, carrying logs, taking down trees, dragging something heavy and anything else in between.

Crawling, Jumping, Balancing, Sprinting and other movement patterns create the natural order of what the human body is capable of. We crawl as babies, we jump onto things, we develop awareness that helps us balance and we become explosive and channel that flight or fight mode. As adults, we don't always crawl as much as we had to as little ones, jumping improperly has led to many injuries and/or fatalities and most of the time, sprint either for recreation or if we're being chased down. As we got older, being natural dwindles and we let age and our faults define us and consume us. Even if we utilize nature even a little bit, there's still some of that order left in the world. Learn to crawl again, play like an animal in the wild, have fun in your exercise and use your imagination. 

We need to realize we're part of nature too and sure we'll always be far more advanced than a wild animal but that doesn't mean we can't learn from them and use nature as a way to strengthen ourselves physically and mentally. Their specific skill sets are extremely powerful and jaw dropping and if we even used a smidge of that to make ourselves stronger as a species, think about the good that can come out of that.