From forest bathing to cold-water swimming, reconnecting with the natural world has been high on our collective agenda for the past few years. And a new fitness trend that has been viewed more than 350,000 times on TikTok may be taking this craze to a new height. Tomi Akande, a personal trainer at UNTIL, explains that quadrobics is an exercise style in which enthusiasts use all four limbs to “mimic the movements of different animals.”
There’s method to this madness: “Quadrobics combines elements of aerobics and calisthenics,” Akande explains. “It’s designed to work all four limbs simultaneously, effectively working the whole body.” Quadrobics exercises not only build strength and agility, they also improve coordination, because they “target a group of muscles collectively known as the ‘quads,’ which are essential for many daily activities and total body stability,” Akande says.
This muscle group includes your quadriceps (the muscles in the front of your thighs), quadratus lumborum (lower back), quads (calf), and quads (which encompass all the muscles in this group and form the main muscle mass of your thighs). Not only are these muscles great for general movement (and helping to prolong movement as you age), “they also help with spinal stability and lateral movement, knee extension and leg lift, and ankle control and foot movement,” says Akande.
If you look closely at the people sharing quadrobics moves on TikTok, you might get a glimpse into the quirkier side of the sport: There are a lot of incredibly flexible people jumping around dressed as cats. But learning to move functionally has huge benefits for our health. Examples of different movements include the personal trainer favorite, the bear crawl, which “mimics the movement of a bear, propelling yourself forward with your hands and feet.” This alone can increase strength, coordination, and agility by engaging your core, shoulders, and legs, says Akande.
Other key moves include the crab walk, in which you sit with your hands behind your back, lift your hips off the ground and walk back and forth using your hands and feet to work your triceps, shoulders and core, and the gorilla walk, in which you get into a deep squat with your hands on the ground and move from side to side to mimic the movements of a gorilla. “This works the legs, hips and upper body,” Akande adds.