A lot of interesting things appear on TikTok. But if you have ever seen Nathaniel Nolan find your page, you probably did a double take.
The 31-year-old movement coach based in Carmel, Indiana, has been profiled as the type that walks on all fours.
What started as an online training diary where he could track his progress has snowballed into over 1 million followers obsessed with his flashy training tactic.
“There really wasn’t an end goal in mind,” she told USA TODAY of the beginning of her four-legged journey and the accompanying videos. “The original goal was to help build enough conditioning to resolve a lot of the pain I was having. But as soon as I started getting the results of that, it became clear this wasn’t something I really wanted.” stop doing”.
He calls his video series “walking on all fours” because that’s part of practice, but it is not everybody of it, he assures.
“It’s about developing a deeper understanding of how to use your body appropriately for the situation you’re in, to be able to achieve your goals. To be able to train every day, to be able to make improvements in the directions you’re going in. you find”. want and align your training with your lifestyle.
What inspired you to start training like this?
Nolan says he originally came up with the concept after battling joint pain from other activities like jujitsu, calisthenics and yoga.
“Having so many different physical disciplines was making me overtrain, because as I went along I was working on more advanced versions of each of those things,” he says.
The wrist and elbow pain in particular was getting to a point where it was making training difficult, he explains, and that’s when he decided he needed to increase the time he was spending on his hands to strengthen them at a much lower intensity.
He started small with planks.
“I would start with isometrics for about a minute a day. And then whenever I started having a lot of success with that, I would introduce the moving elements that include a lot of the things that you see on my different social media.”
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What benefits have you found?
Within the first month, Nolan says that “a lot of the pain, stiffness, and tightness…resolved almost completely.”
Now, almost a year after this practice, he trains every day and has “unlocked a lot of new physical abilities” that he didn’t have before.
“All my disciplines have progressed because of that,” he says. “So instead of this being just something new that I’m adding, or a replacement for those things, it’s really what unifies all of my current physical practices.”
And while it does work your body, Nolan doesn’t call it a full-body workout. Instead, he describes it as “a mechanism to be able to modulate intensity quickly and intuitively.”
“By allowing me to keep my feet on the ground while practicing upper body movements, that allows me to move the weight back and forth at my discretion so I can decide what the right intensity is so it’s not too light but still light enough to be able to avoid pain.
mori summerspersonal trainer and founder of brooklyn fitness formhe says he sees positives in this type of four-legged practice.
“I absolutely believe that by practicing moving your body with fundamental movements, like crawling, you would become stronger and more agile,” she says. “Do I think you have to do the same type of training every day? No, or at least not to the extent that he did. I have all my clients warming up with different movements on all fours, but most of them never do a handstand or the moves that he’s doing because the moves that he’s doing are incredibly high-skill.”
Summers points to others he has studied and learned from as Tim Andersonwho wrote “Original Force”, in which he talks about fundamental movements such as crawling and mike fitchwho founded Animal Flow, which also consists of moving through space on all fours.
“Our fundamental movements start from the moment we are born and unfortunately as we get older…we start to lose our ability to move well,” adds Summers. “Starting a four-legged practice has many benefits. To live a long and healthy life, we definitely want to stay as mobile, agile and strong as possible and there are many different modalities in which you can practice these things.”
What do you see for the future of fitness for the four?
Since first posting on TikTok, Nolan has progressed both in his practice and in conveying to his audience what he’s all about.
“At first, a lot of people asked me what it was because of a lack of understanding,” he says, explaining that his mission is to show what this method really entails. “That way, people don’t get confused into thinking it’s just a crawling bear or just walking on all fours.”
And with 343 days and counting of practicing and posting, viewers have plenty of opportunity to peek into what he does on a daily basis.
While she hopes people can learn a bit through her social media, she also encourages those interested in developing their own four-legged practice to get personalized training advice through her patreon.
He also hopes that people will see how accessible practices on all fours can be.
Whether you have equipment or not, have space inside or outside, he highlights the number of unique training practices that can be done through his method that are “easy to replicate no matter who you are.”
Summers says it’s important to start off slow with any practice, especially if you haven’t done much movement. But, she encourages incorporating movement in any way that she can.
“At the end of the day, movement is movement and movement is better than no movement.”
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