Lizards, monkeys and bears, oh my! Try the Animal Movement Workout.

Lately my workouts have been looking a little strange: I'm slithering like a lizard, crawling like a bear, and crawling like a crab. It's called quadrupedal motion training (or animal movement) and is taken from TikTok (the related hashtag #primalmovement has 2.4 billion views).

At first glance, the workouts seem a bit strange – more like an audition for Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” than a workout. But are they effective?

Proponents say the exercise targets muscles often neglected by other workouts, and that moving your arms and legs diagonally across the body (rather than, say, running, where they simply move forward and back in line) is important is for building resilient joints and body awareness. .

To put animal movement to the test, I collected some common exercises and tried them four times a week for a month. This is what I learned.

How it works and feels

There is a lot of overlap between animal relocation and more established practices such as yoga, Pilates And dancewhich strive for improve balance And core poweras well as enlarging the joints mobility and stability, said Dr. Sachin Allahabadi, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston who sometimes warms up with “bear crawls” before HIIT sessions.

But research specifically on animal movement is still limited. A small study found it lights up about the same number of calories as a comparable duration of other moderate aerobic exercise, such as a game of doubles tennis. Another suggests that it improves coordination and hip and shoulder flexibility, which is especially important as we get older.

Initially, I found the workouts were uncomfortable and required intense focus: what was my right hand doing and where was my left foot? But after a few weeks they started to feel familiar, almost like dancing. It also made me move in ways I rarely had, even in a yoga class, challenging my shoulders and arms. And while a 30-minute session doesn't have the power of a 10km run, I was certainly panting as if I'd hiked a series of hills.

But it's not a panacea: it can get repetitive, and to maintain (or build) muscle mass, you'll need to add resistance training. It's also hard to do while watching Netflix.

In the future, I'll use animal motion to break down long stretches at my desk, like Jeffrey Buxton, an exercise scientist at Grove City College, does. Or I sprinkle it into circuit training workouts – a round of crab walks to replace jumpers, for example. “It is an accessible exercise and meets many requirements,” said Dr. Buxton.