Locomotion Exercises Examples
Joy Wida
Download this free strength and agility routine and learn to move in ways most workouts neglect.
Used by thousands to regain pain-free range of motion.What Is Locomotion?The quick definition is moving your body through space. Like walking, you stand up and walk from your desk to get your keys, then you walk out the door to your car.
Walking is an easy way to understand this, where the foot on the ground is the base of a closed chain for that leg. As your body is propelled forward, the leg that is swinging forward for the next step is an open chain movement.
For instance, pull-ups are a closed chain exercise for the upper body because your hands are fixed and you are lifting your body up toward them, while doing a pull-down on a machine is open chain because your body is stable and you are moving your hands.
These animal exercises are fun, playful movements that go way beyond just being good for warm-ups. When you do them properly, and in a variety of ways, these exercises stimulate and build high levels of strength, flexibility, and body control, everything you need that most sport-specific, singular programs cannot fully cover.
This situation is reversed when your hands are placed on the ground and your body moves around that fixed point, as happens when practicing these locomotion exercises. In this case, your scapular muscles resist different types of forces.
For example, the serratus anterior muscle protracts your scapulae (brings them forward), which is its concentric contraction. This is the motion of punching and reaching out with your arm. But with the hand on the ground the force to keep the scapulae from collapsing is now an isometric contraction, and the control into scapular retraction is an eccentric contraction of the serratus.
Good strength and control of the different types of muscular contraction are necessary for optimal shoulder girdle performance in the many activities we do every day and in sport. Practicing and training them are keys to maintaining and improving shoulder health.
Keeping your elbows pulled into your body midline and your fingers rotating outward is a shoulder external rotation force. This, combined with the scapular protraction and shoulder elevation from pushing firmly into the ground, creates a practical and functional activation of the rotator cuff that is in contrast to the familiar remedial open chain exercises with rubber bands and dumbbells.
The active scapular protraction and shoulder elevation that happens when you take the body upside down encourages upper trapezius contraction under a lessened and distinctly different loading. This unique stimulation gives the upper trapezius a break from the usual pattern, which in turn can alleviate the effects of overwork from repetitive daily strain.
This is where stability and control come into play, as the spine has to contend with the resistant forces from the body moving around while the alternating legs and arms are anchored on the ground from step to step.
The contralateral movement pattern (right leg moving forward with left arm, and right arm moving forward with left leg) necessarily causes spinal rotation and side bending, which happens grossly in the thoracic spine (upper and mid back). These motions then have to be controlled by the spinal muscles to prevent excessive motion.
The positioning also encourages mobility and control for backward bending and rotation, the two primary issues in the upper back for many people. Think of the classic slumped forward posture that sitting at a desk or steering wheel can engender.
While you practice crawling in different positions, the upper body becomes the stabilizing counterforce as the load comes down through the hands and upper body, whereas in standing, sitting, and walking, the low back takes the brunt of that force.
From reading the above you can see now how these animal positions, though seemingly simple, can actually induce a great stimulus in your training and particular in body areas that benefit greatly from it.
The movements above are the four main exercises you can work on. But there are many more variations you can explore, but often, the ability to explore a movement confidently comes from first getting comfortable with the standard form of that movement.
Elements uses these 4 fundamental locomotor movements to help build a strong foundation, which allows for confident exploration of movement, as well as the ability to move on to more advanced skills and goals down the line.
Locomotor Skills are when we move our bodies from one location to another. They are a gross motor skill and the word locomotor comes from the noun locomotion which basically means the act of moving from place to place.
Gross Motor Skills refer to the bigger movements we make with our bodies that require the co-ordination of our larger limbs, torso and muscles working together to move in unison. Gross Motor Skills are the opposite of Fine Motor Skills which refer to the smaller movements we make with the smaller limbs of our bodies in particular our fingers as in the act of writing or cutting for example.
Gross motor skills do not just refer to running, throwing balls and other activities you might see performed in a physical education lesson. They also refer to important everyday activities such as getting dressed, our posture, moving from one place to another and more.
Gross Motor Skills can be divided up into two main categories. Locomotor skills that involve movement from one place to another and Control Skills that might require our bodies to control our limbs such as dancers do when they pose with a leg in the air for instance or control of an object such as when we kick a ball.
Locomotor skills are important as they are the means by which we move our bodies from one place to another. Practice and repetition of locomotor skills is important for children to help develop as many neural pathways as possible to support the coordination of this movement, as well as build strength in our muscles and joints to be able to perform them and muscle memory so that our brains send the messages to our muscles quickly to move them more proficiently.
The following Dance Tutorials made especially for toddlers and kids have some great examples of locomotor skills. In the first video, children get to move their bodies to the beat of the music whilst they work on marching to the rhythm. They strengthen their calf and ankles muscles as they twirl on tiptoe and have fun co-ordinating their knees to bend, bop, and dance with the music. In the second video, children work on skipping or galloping to music that inspires swinging movement. They slide from side to side as if on ice and have to walk slowly and gracefully like a regal king or queen which develops full-body muscle control as well as balance.
The benefit of Locomotor movement activities is that they help to develop spatial awareness, balance, coordination of the larger limbs, visual-spatial awareness, cardiovascular fitness, and the more they are done the more pathways the brain will make to accommodate the muscle memory learning.
Spatial Awareness
Spatial awareness is knowing where your body is situated in space. Not in space as in up in space with the stars, but in the space or environment that your body occupies. It is the ability to know that if you take two steps forward you will be to close to the person you are waiting in line behind, or to be able to perceive that at the rate you are walking you will make it across the road before the car up the road comes. Spatial awareness is a really important skill that many children need to be consciously taught and locomotor skills play an important part in teaching them.
Visual Spatial Awareness
Visual spatial awareness is more about being able to visualise a space, whether you are present in the space or not. For example being able to navigate either through reading a map, listening to instructions or from a previous experience. Being able to estimate distance or measurements or being able to build a project from a diagram or from the blueprint in your mind. Proficient locomotor skills are needed to be able to move your body to be able to do any of these things.
Cardiovascular Fitness
Because locomotor movement is a gross motor skill which involves moving the largest limbs, our bodies needs to work extra hard to do them. This means that our heart rate increases and when we practice locomotor skills for an extended amount of time we over a period of time increase our cardiovascular or heart fitness.
Poor gross motor skills can be developed from a lack of practice or engagement in activities that aim to develop them. They can also be caused by slow brain development or damaged nerve or brain cells because our bodies rely on the connection between our muscles, nerves, and brains to move them.
Having my Bachelor of Education (Primary) and having taught in schools, I am always looking at ways to creatively teach children and regularly used dance and movement in my classrooms to enforce learning of concepts and material we were learning about in different areas of the school curriculum.
Samantha trained and worked professionally as a dancer and has a Diploma in Dance as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Education. She currently runs Dance Parent 101 as well as Move Dance Learn whilst caring for her four children and enjoying life with her Husband.
Here at Move Dance Learn, we create dance videos for kids. We have so many to offer, but thought we would put together a list of our top ten dance tutorials for kids to make them easy for you to find...
When you think of human movement it can be broken down into 4 basic categories. Locomotion, Level Changes, Push/Pull and Rotation. These represent the 4 pillars of human movement as described by JC Santana in his book Functional Training; Breaking the Bonds of Traditionalism. When designing rehab or fitness programs that are functionally based it is important to make sure all 4 pillars are incorporated.
c80f0f1006