I still get chills at the thought of 6 am Spring mat drills during college, it is a lineman’s nightmare. Trash barrels were placed all over the gym as to keep the mat and floor free of certain bodily fluids. A largely unpleasant memory I’m not likely to soon forget. Wrestlers and football players have been tumbling for years, with bear crawls, rolls, 3 man weaves, and whole bunch of belly floppin’ all over the place for conditioning, punishment or combination of both.
All the bad memories aside, the benefits of tumbling include increased flexibility, body control/ balance, core strength development, and conditioning. The body awareness and coordination benefits provide a fun challenge for all ages. By adding a few yards of bear crawls, and a handful of rolls you can effectively engage your core, shoulder and hip girdles into a terrific dynamic warm up that is a lot more fun now than it was with an earful of screaming coaches and chorus of up-down belly claps on a sweat puddled wrestling mat at 6 am.
I continue to emphasize multi joint multi plane complex exercises that teach and train your body to work as a whole rather than robotic single joint single plane curls and extensions.
