If you’ve ever tripped while trail running, crashed onto the mat below a bouldering wall, or taken a tumble off your bike, you know that how you land can mean the difference between standing up and continuing your workout or heading to the ER. To give yourself the best chance of getting off the ground in one piece, consider spending more time there.
Once we learn how to walk, we spend most of our waking hours sitting or standing. Growing evidence suggests that we should get back on all fours for at least a few minutes a day through a practice called quadrupedal movement training (QMT), which can improve core strength, coordination, balance, mobility, and range of motion. For athletes, it can also mitigate some of the risks associated with falls and crashes.
How to Prevent Falls (and Fall Safely) with Animal Flow
The ground is “where we first learned how to move and control ourselves through space,” says Freyja Spence, a health and movement coach and the Head of Standards for Animal Flow, a QMT-based training program. Once we begin spending most of our time upright, we tend to rely heavily on our…
