The 6 Areas A Baby Needs To Master To Learn To Crawl and Exercises To Help

There are 6 things babies need to be able to do in order to learn how to crawl. If a baby is struggling with crawling, it is essential to focus on these six areas to ensure that kiddos who are struggling with crawling have the essential building blocks that children need to master in order to progress toward crawling.

If a child struggles in any or multiple areas, they may not crawl and instead move in less ideal ways such as booty scooting, hitch crawling, or army crawling for longer than one month.

The six areas a baby needs to master are:

1. Upper Trunk Strength 

2. Upper Trunk Mobility

3. Lower Trunk Strength

4. Lower Trunk Mobility

5. Core Strength

6. Crawling Specific Motions

If you’re curious about why each of these areas is important, make sure to watch all of the videos linked down below where I explain exactly how each of these exercises can help a child progress to hands and knees crawling.

For Exercises, it's best to focus on at least one exercise per section for the week.  I tell the families I work with to focus on 3 exercises or 20 minutes per day with some extra exercises on the weekends or on days when parents find that they have more time.  

Each exercise is either 2-5 minutes or about 10 reps, however, it is okay to tailor it to a baby’s specific tolerance and then increase by 2-3 repetitions or 15-30 seconds each day or week as available/tolerated. 

*exercise listed in more than one section

Mobility of the Upper Trunk

1. Seated Upper Trunk Mobility

2. Transitioning from sitting to all fours*

3. Upper Trunk / Lower Trunk Release*

Mobility of the Lower Trunk

1. Upper Trunk / Lower Trunk Release*

2. Abdominal Stretching / Neck Stretching

3. Side Sitting*

Strengthening of Upper Trunk

1. Baby Planks (goal 15-30 sec at a time)

2. Baby Wheelbarrow (goal 3-5 feet without collapsing)

3. Weight Bearing Through Arms on Elevated Play Surfaces (coming soon)

Strengthening of Lower Trunk

1. Side Sitting

2. Tall Kneeling / Tall Kneeling on Incline Toy (coming soon)

3. Pull to Stand at Activity Table / Pull to Stand at Couch or Small Table

4. Baby Toddler Squat

Core Strengthening

1. Supine to Sidelying to Sit (side core muscles)

2. Supine to Sit (if #1 is too difficult)

3. Bench Sitting

4. Advanced Bench Sitting

Crawling Training

1. Transitioning from Sitting to Crawling 

2. Rocking on all fours

3. Reaching in all fours

4. Supported Crawling

Crawling on hands and knees is a significantly important milestone, maybe even the most important milestone for all around holistic long term development.

Without hands and knees crawling babies miss out on:

1. Strengthening the hand muscles which can impact hand writing legibility, formation of letters, and control of a pencil

2. Decreased postural control strengthening of the upper trunk which can impact handwriting

3. Decreased core strengthening which can impact gross motor skills such as running, jumping, throwing/catching

4. Decreased Eye movement and coordination which can impact reading / writting / catching a ball

5. Decreased isolation of head movements from the body, which can impact coordination

6. Decreased hip strengthening opportunities which can impact progress toward walking independently (especially if mobility is with booty scooting or army crawling ie neither of those result in neutral hip position weight bearing).

If your child is past 11 months and is not yet crawling on hands / knees, schedule a parent consultation or evaluation here.

3 Crawling Exercises For Infants

Here are three crawling exercises for infants or exercises to get your baby crawling.

This post contains affiliate links, please see my disclaimer for more information.

Lauren is the owner of Dr. Lauren Baker In Home Pediatric Physical Therapy and provides paid 60-minute online parent consultations for individuals with additional questions internationally. For scheduling please click here.

This video will teach you:

• Three Exercises to help your baby crawl

• Why crawling is absolutely necessary and should not be skipped

• What a Pediatric PT can do if your baby needs extra help

find what you’re looking for

0:00 introduction
3:11 exercise #1 quadruped rocking
4:15 exercise #2 quadruped reaching
5:36 exercise #3 assisted crawling
7:07 what pediatric physical therapy can do
7:52 crawling playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

transcription coming soon

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