Locomotion

TLDR

• Locomotion is moving your body your space under control
• Everybody should be doing it
• As a quick rule of thumb 1/4 of your resistance training duration per week, should be spent doing locomotion

Description

Here, locomotion refers to movements where you are moving through space. To be precise, we are using this as the umbrella term for both loaded carries and animal movements.

Some classic examples are the prowler push, the suitcase carry, the bear walk and crab walk.

Locomotion training is arguably unmatched for building control, enhancing movement quality and serving as bonus conditioning work (though it should be considered distinct to true conditioning training).

I posit that locomotion, more than any other type of exercise, is the ‘secret sauce’ to enhancing your overall training.

Dan John talks about the ‘what the hell’ effect with loaded carries (and kettlebell swings); the GMB and Animal Flow systems (among others) both present a systemised way of approaching calisthenics and animal movements that has been used successfully alongside resistance training.

The only word of warning is locomotion is an amazing complement to resistance training, not a replacement for it.

Again, as with most training attributes we aren’t looking to hyper specialise in the skill of animal movements, for example. You can spend ten hours a week training to become an animal movement expert; that’s not our aim. The goal is to find an effective minimum dose to bring over transferable training qualities.

Prescription

You’ll notice the suggested parameters don’t change too much, simply because locomotion work is almost always a consistently effective use of training time for most people’s goals.

For beginners:

10 minutes total duration per week

For intermediates:

20 minutes total duration per week

For advanced:

30 minutes total duration per week

10 key movements

To that end, these are the 10 fundamental locomotion movements that are the basic building blocks of locomotion.

• Overhead carry
• Rack carry
• Suitcase/farmers carry
• Bear
• Monkey
• Frogger
• Crab
• Prowler pull
• Prowler push
• Walking lunge

Some of these movements will have several exercise options, others have a clear choice. In more detail:

KB Waiter Carry

A unilateral walking exercise, holding a kettlebell (or dumbbell) over your head with your arm locked out. This serves as all rounder shoulder isometric strengthening exercise. A barbell overhead carry is a worthy substitute on occasion, but there’s no doubt the unilateral work is ideal here to strengthen any weaknesses.

KB Rack Carry

A unilateral walking exercise, holding a kettlebell (or dumbbell) in the rack position on your clavicle. This serves as an upper back isometric strengthening exercise.

KB Suitcase Carry

A unilateral walking exercise, holding a kettlebell (or dumbbell) by your side. This serves as a core, primarily obliques, isometric strengthening exercise. This should be done walking with a fully straight torso. It is vital you fight the tendency to tilt to the side; not doing so defeats the entire point of working the obliques.

Another strong contender is the Farmers Walk with the true farmers carry handles. This now becomes a predominantly traps exercise as opposed to obliques, but I still consider it within this same category. Unfortunately, the handles are fairly uncommon and not seen in most gyms. A trap bar can be used as an alternative, but taking away the instability takes away much of the point of doing these.

In other words both the KB Suitcase Carry and Farmers Walk are S tier; the Trap Bar Farmers Walk not so much.

Bear

A quadrupedal bodyweight movement, starting in a downward dog position. Spread your fingers, lock out the elbows, keep your head neutral, and most importantly push your butt up. If you can, lock out the knees and drive your heels to the ground; if not experiment with bending the knees or walking on the balls of your feet.

With the movement, move one limb forward at a time, then the opposing appendage (left arm, right leg, right arm, left leg, etc). Throughout this keep emphasising ‘butt up’.

Monkey

A quadrupedal bodyweight movement, starting in a deep ass-to-grass squat. Think chest up (or neutral spine to be more precise), and if possible have your foot evenly spread on the ground, heel and ball; if not getting on the balls of your feet is fine.

With the movement, get fully up on the balls of your feet, then place your arms diagonally in front of you (so that one arm is on the inside of its same knee and the other arm is on the outside of its same knee). Perform a hop to move sideways.

Over time, focus on a slower and slower hop so that you are fully under control, and eventually paused, mid-hop. Then eventually bring the hips up so it’s stacked over your shoulders, sort of like a bent knee paused cartwheel.

Frogger

A quadrupedal bodyweight movement, starting in a deep ass-to-grass squat. Think chest up (or neutral spine to be more precise), and if possible have your foot evenly spread on the ground, heel and ball; if not getting on the balls of your feet is fine.

With the movement, get fully up on the balls of your feet, then place your arms directly in front of you. Perform a hop forwards.

Over time, focus on a slower and slower hop so that you are fully under control, and eventually paused, mid-hop (arms locked out, knees outside elbows).

Crab

A quadrupedal bodyweight movement, starting in a regressed L-sit position. So feet on the floor, knees bent, arms locked out, and hands by your sides with your fingers pointing sideways. Pull the shoulders back and down and maximally drive into the ground (i.e. scapula depression).

With the movement, move one limb forward at a time, then the opposing appendage (left arm, right leg, right arm, left leg, etc). Throughout this keep emphasising maximal scapula depression.

Prowler Pull

Essentially walking backwards under load, holding either the prowler handles directly or a TRX strap or resistance band tied to the prowler. This primarily works the hamstrings, and going through the concentric motion without the eccentric allows you to build up more volume with minimal fatigue. Because of this it’s also great recovery work for a light day after an all-out leg session, for example.

Think deliberate steps at a moderate pace, driving fully down with your foot with pressure on the inner part of the heel. Not a mad dash sprint. We want movement quality, not conditioning (though conditioning will still be a side effect).

Prowler Push

Essentially walking forwards under load, pushing the prowler handles directly. This primarily works the quadriceps, and going through the concentric motion without the eccentric allows you to build up more volume with minimal fatigue. Because of this it’s also great recovery work for a light day after an all-out leg session, for example.

Think deliberate steps at a moderate pace, driving fully down with your foot with pressure on the inner part of the ball of your feet. Not a mad dash sprint. We want movement quality, not conditioning (though conditioning will still be a side effect).

Strictly speaking a prowler push holding the top part of the handle and the bottom part could be considered two different variations, but for our purposes any reasonable grip where you can push and feel it in your quads is fine.

KB Walking Lunge

A unilateral lunge forwards, holding two kettlebells (or dumbbells). Generally there are two ways to execute a lunge, either a quad dominant one or a glute dominant one. We’ve got the quads and hams covered with prowler work so this is the perfect place for a glute dominant walking lunge.

This means your knees are stacked over your foot each step and you’re contracting the glutes to drive yourself up each step. Your rear knee should not be touching the ground on each step if you’re keeping this control.

Again, same with the prowler work focus on steady, deliberate steps. This is not max effort strength work where you can barely hold on to the dumbbells and you’re wobbling around each step to control the weight.

Programming

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of fitting in locomotion work.

1. Have a separate locomotion session for 15-30 minutes on a rest day
2. Fit them in at the end of our regular (resistance training) work for 5-10 minutes

Full locomotion session

The 10 key movements above are structured in a specific order.

If you’re doing a full locomotion session, you would work down the list from one to ten.

• The kettlebell work serves as a de facto warm-up and additional shoulder strengthening work early is always a good idea.
• Animal movements are next as the highest skill movements, we don’t want it to be done last.
• The bear, monkey, frogger and crab is specifically sequenced as such because each one progressively increases demands on the wrist.
• We finish with the lower body as it requires less coordination and also serves as conditioning.

A traditional rep and set scheme isn’t going to work very well for locomotion exercises.

Rather, using distance as the metric is a good way to go. Having said that, movement quality is still key – this cannot be emphasised enough.

It’ll look something like this. Set a distance of 10-20 metres, depending on the size of your gym. Here we’ll assume 10 metres as a standard.

• Two rounds:
  • 10m KB Waiter Carry on non-dominant hand
  • 10m KB Waiter Carry on dominant hand
  • 10m KB Rack Carry on non-dominant hand
  • 10m KB Rack Carry on dominant hand
  • 10m KB Suitcase Carry on non-dominant hand
  • 10m KB Suitcase Carry on dominant hand
• Two rounds:
  • 10m Bear
  • 10m Monkey
  • 10m Frogger
  • 10m Crab
• One round:
  • 20m Prowler Pull
  • 20m Prowler Push
  • 20m KB Walking Lunge

There aren’t specific rest times programmed in, though of course you can take a few breathers here and there to catch your breath and sip some water.

All up, this is a mostly continuous work that will tax you in a very different way to traditional resistance training.

Locomotion work is inherently auto-regulated and self paced.

You will pick a load where you feel fully in control of the movement, so there’s no specific numbers here.

As a very approximate guide, you might consider weights around this rage:

• If you’re a guy, perhaps around 8-12kg on the waiters carry, then +4kg for the rack carry, and +4kg for the suitcase carry. The prowler pulls perhaps 40kg plates and double the weights for the push (though this heavily depends on the specific prowler). With walking lunges guys tend to be in the 20’s kg range with strict form and a glute dominant set-up, or perhaps 30’s.
• If you’re a girl, perhaps around 4-6kg on the waiters carry, then +4kg for the rack carry, and +4kg for the suitcase carry. The prowler pulls perhaps 20kg plates and double the weights for the push (though this heavily depends on the specific prowler). With walking lunges girls tend to be in the 10’s kg range with strict form and a glute dominant set-up, or perhaps 20’s.

Locomotion finishers

If you’re appending 5-10 minutes of locomotion to the end of a resistance training session, we obviously want to keep it short and snappy.

A logical way to break this down is to only pick a couple of movements. If you pay attention to the above it’s pretty clear there are three general groupings.

• Upper body focused work with a kettlebell
• Lower body focused work with a prowler
• Upper body focused (wrists and shoulders) work with bodyweight

These can each be used as a locomotion ‘finisher’ by itself. The animal movements in particular are complex skills that we could really delve into if we wish.

Thus, a rough sample of locomotion ‘finishers’ are:

• KB carry circuit
• Prowler pull and push
• Animal movement circuit
• Bear
• Frogger
• Monkey
• Crab
• KB walking lunge

The possibilities are really endless; as you gain more experience there are infinite little tweaks and variations you can craft.

KB carry circuit

Using 1 kettlebell, do the suitcase carry for 10m, drop down to the rack carry for 10m, drop down to the suitcase carry for 20m.

Start on the non-dominant hand, then the dominant hand.

Do this for 2 or 3 rounds.

Prowler pull and push

Using 1 weight on the prowler, do a prowler pull for 10m, then a prowler push for 20m.

Do this for 3-5 rounds.

Animal movement circuit

Here a 1 minute duration per movement works very well.

Walk with the bear for 1 minute, the frogger for 1 minute, the monkey for 1 minute, and the crab for 1 minute.

If you need to rest, just rest but don’t stop the timer.

Do this for 2-3 rounds.

Bear / Monkey / Frogger / Crab

Each of these movements can be done by itself for its own mini-workout. The programming is the same so it’s grouped together.

Walk with the chosen movement for 1 minute. Rest 30 seconds.

Do this for 8-12 rounds.

KB Walking Lunge

Another singular exercise which is still a very effective locomotion pattern all by itself.

Lunge for 10m. Rest 30 seconds.

Do this for 3-6 rounds.

Advanced

Most people will get the most value from various combinations of the above 10 key movements.

This is really for enthusiasts with lots of time on your hands.

There are an infinite number of ‘sequences’ or combinations of movements you can chain together. As you gain more experience you are of course free to create your own. For those wanting some structure, GMB and Animal Flow have some particularly excellent resources on ideas.

Below are a few sample specific routines:

Combo #1

• Stand to Sit
• Sit to A-frame
• A-frame to Spiderman
• Spiderman opposite side
• Spiderman to Squat
• Squat to High Monkey
• High Monkey opposite side
• High Monkey to Frogger Stall
• Frogger Stall to Crab
• Crab to L-Sit
• L-Sit to Sit
• Sit to Stand