EDITOR’S NOTE: These workouts are written by Tim Anderson, founder of Original Strength. Tim’s goal as a coach is “to set people free through movement.” Regain your original strength with this four-week cycle of workouts that focuses on one of the most fundamental human movements: crawling. To learn more about this program, read Tim’s article here.
The following four-week plan is designed to help you restore your original strength, increase reflexive strength, and improve your performance in whatever physical area you are passionate about. In the first two weeks, the goal is to ease your way into crawling three days a week. The workouts will be posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but you can move them around to fit your schedule. These training sessions may seem easy for some of you, but give them a shot nonetheless. I think you may be surprised at how this simple exercise can restore and refresh your body.
In weeks three and four, the plan goes down to twice per week. In these two weeks, we start to strength train while we are still pressing reset. These training sessions may seem grueling. You will be left with an even fatigue, yet still feel fresh and able to conquer the rest of your day, if not your week. Again, the workouts will be posted on Mondays and Wednesdays, but you can adjust these days around your schedule.
We are only performing ten minutes of work in each of these training sessions. If you can, perform these training sessions on lighter days within your training week. If you cannot, or do not have lighter training days, feel free to continue your regular training and fit these sessions in when you can. You could even use weeks one and two for your movement prep before your training sessions. If you do this, don’t be surprised if you perform well during your training routine.
For weeks three and four, it may be wise to perform these sessions on their own, at first. Surely you can find two days a week that you can crawl for ten minutes. Be aware, this could become one of your favorite strength training exercises.
Week 4: Wrap-Up
If you were able to Forward Leopard Crawl for 10 straight minutes in Week 3, you are really well tied together and mentally tough as well.
If you were able to Backwards Leopard Crawl for 10 straight minutes at the end of Week 4, what can you not do? You can do anything you want! You have tremendous reflexive strength!
If you were not able to achieve 10 straight minutes of Leopard Crawling yet, It is okay. I am sure you have made wonderful progress as you have been laying a solid foundation of reflexive strength with each and every step you have made. If you keep at it, you will be able to reach 10 straight minutes of crawling soon. If you can crawl for 10 minutes, you can crawl for 20. Really, you can. There are no limits to what you can do once your have a solid foundation of reflexive strength, your original strength.
Tim Anderson is co-author of Original Strength: Regaining the Body You Were Meant To Have and Original Strength Performance: Becoming The Superhero You Were Meant Be. He is cofounder of Original Strength Systems, LLC. To learn more about regaining your original strength, check out OriginalStrength.net.
