The Lost Art of Moving Like a Human
Rediscovering Movement as Play
Back in 2015, I picked up a book that completely changed how I looked at training. It was Christopher McDougall’s Natural Born Heroes, and what started as a good read quickly became a full-blown shift in how I thought about movement. McDougall weaves together stories of Second World War resistance fighters in Crete with the origins of parkour and the idea of natural movement: running, climbing, crawling, carrying, throwing, and balancing — the kinds of things the human body evolved to do long before barbells and treadmills existed.
A few months later, I found myself knee-deep in mud at my first Spartan Race. Somewhere between crawling under barbed wire, hauling sandbags uphill, and swinging across monkey bars with freezing hands, I realised that this “natural movement” idea wasn’t just interesting theory. It was practical, powerful, and strangely fun. It wasn’t about chasing a look or a number. It was about reclaiming capability.
That experience lit a spark that’s stayed with me ever since. In early 2016 I even went through my Level 1 MovNat certification, not because I planned to make a career out of teaching people to crawl and climb, but because I wanted to understand how humans are meant to move when you strip fitness back to its roots. What I learned from that process still shapes how I train and coach today. It reminded me that play and performance aren’t opposites. They’re partners.
Somewhere along the way, most adults stop playing. We start “working out.” We swap curiosity for control and exploration for repetition. But if you look at kids on a playground, hanging, running, rolling, and laughing without thought for sets or reps, you’re looking at the purest form of athletic development. Movement play isn’t childish. It’s how we learn, adapt, and stay capable for life.
From Obstacle Course to Everyday Life
Those early obstacle course races were my wake-up call. Every wall I had to scale, every crawl under a low beam, every awkward jump across uneven ground made me appreciate how limited most of our modern training has become. We spend hours strengthening our bodies in one plane of motion, then feel surprised when something as basic as getting up off the floor feels clumsy or stiff.
If you’ve read Train for the Life You Want, Not Just the Body You Miss, you already know where this is heading. Fitness should build freedom: the ability to move confidently, smoothly, and without hesitation through the unpredictable chaos of real life. That’s what those races taught me. Crawling and climbing weren’t exotic skills. They were extensions of basic human movement that had gone dormant from years of desk work and gym routines that only covered the basics.
When you rebuild that capability, everything changes. You don’t just move better on a race course. You move better in life. Carrying groceries becomes easier. Kneeling to garden or play with your kids stops feeling like an event. Balance returns. You start trusting your body again, not because it looks strong, but because it is strong in every direction.
In What a Backyard Project (and a Decade of Spartan Races) Taught Me About Real Strength, I wrote that capability isn’t built in perfect conditions. It’s built through variety, awkwardness, and adaptation. Movement play is the training equivalent of that. It asks your body to solve problems rather than just follow instructions. And the payoff is resilience that actually shows up when you need it.
Why Movement Play Matters
At its core, movement play rebuilds the patterns that make us athletic in the first place. It’s coordination, balance, strength, and mobility woven together. And it’s every bit as relevant at 40 or 60 as it is at 20.
Crawling and Cross-Crawl Patterns
Crawling might look simple, but it’s a full-body coordination drill disguised as fun. It re-teaches your brain and body to communicate efficiently across the midline, reinforcing that cross-crawl pattern that underpins everything from walking to running to throwing. It challenges stability through your core, shoulders, and hips while forcing you to think and move at the same time. That “thinking while moving” piece is often missing in adult training, yet it’s what keeps reaction time sharp and movement fluid.
Jumping, Landing, and Rolling
Many adults forget how to absorb impact. We lose that ability to land softly, to roll out of awkward positions, to use our muscles and joints as shock absorbers instead of just stiff structures. Practising jumps, landings, and rolls retrains that skill: the art of force production and force absorption. It builds athletic power but also injury resilience. Learning to fall well is a skill that can literally protect you for life.
Hanging and Climbing
Hanging, swinging, and climbing are some of the most neglected yet powerful forms of upper-body training. Hanging decompresses the spine, opens the shoulders, and stretches the tight tissues that build up from years of sitting and forward-rounded posture. Even if you can only hang for ten seconds at a time, aim to accumulate about two minutes total throughout the day. Research has linked consistent hanging to improvements in shoulder health, grip strength, and overhead mobility. The results don’t require heroics, just consistency.
Balancing and Ground-to-Standing
Then there’s the balance and floor-work component. Simple things like getting up and down without using your hands, or balancing on one leg, might sound trivial until you realise how often they show up in daily life. These patterns strengthen the vestibular system, which helps your body interpret movement, maintain balance, and stay oriented in space. The loss of that system is one of the biggest predictors of falls and frailty later in life. Training it through play keeps you capable, independent, and confident.
When you blend these elements together, something interesting happens. Training stops feeling like punishment and starts feeling like exploration again. You move for curiosity, not just calorie burn. You train to use your body, not just to manage it.
The Barriers That Hold Adults Back
So if this all sounds so good, why don’t more people do it?
Because adults carry baggage, both physical and psychological. Years of sitting, repetitive training, or injuries can leave joints stiff and movement patterns rusty. But the bigger hurdle is often mindset. Somewhere along the line, we decided that “play” was beneath us. That grown-ups should exercise with purpose, not enjoyment. That if you’re laughing during a workout, it can’t possibly be hard enough.
I see it all the time when I introduce a new movement in the gym. The hesitation. The quick glance around to see who’s watching. So I usually start with, “This is going to feel a little silly, but here’s why we’re doing it.” That simple pre-frame drops the tension immediately. When people understand the purpose, and they see everyone else crawling or balancing beside them, the self-consciousness fades. Suddenly it’s just movement again.
Our small-group environment helps, too. Once clients know each other and feel comfortable, that social permission to “look silly” opens the door to experimentation. There’s laughter. There’s problem-solving. There’s a sense of camaraderie that doesn’t happen when everyone’s silently counting reps with their earbuds in.
The truth is, novelty and play are powerful adherence tools. People are far more likely to keep showing up when training includes moments of fun and discovery. Those who play together, stay together. It builds connection, and connection builds consistency.
And when someone who’s spent years feeling tight, awkward, or uncoordinated suddenly finds themselves crawling smoothly across the floor or balancing on a beam without wobbling, the grin on their face says it all. That rediscovery of control, that “Oh, I can still do this” moment, is pure gold.
Where to Begin: Reclaiming Natural Movement
You don’t need a certification, fancy equipment, or a jungle gym in your living room to get started. The best way to reintroduce movement play is simply to start moving differently.
Try this:
Get down to the ground and back up again once or twice a day. Use different paths each time.
Hang from a pull-up bar, tree branch, or playground structure whenever you can. Ten seconds here and there adds up to your two-minute goal.
Balance on one leg while brushing your teeth or waiting for the kettle to boil. Switch sides.
Crawl forward, backward, and sideways for short bouts. Mix in bear crawls, leopard crawls, or whatever feels natural.
Roll from your back to your stomach and back again slowly. Feel what your body does to control that motion.
Throw, catch, climb, jump, or duck under things. Interact with your environment.
The key isn’t volume or intensity. It’s awareness. Notice how your body moves through space, how it reacts, and where it hesitates. That awareness is the beginning of change.
If you want a structured way to explore these ideas at home, check out GMB at gmb.io. Their approach to movement play, control, and body awareness aligns beautifully with what we teach here, and they offer excellent online resources to help you build these skills safely and progressively.
If you’ve read Lift AND Run AND Walk AND Crawl, you’ll see the overlap here. The goal isn’t to specialise, but to build a body that can handle life. Lifting, running, walking, and crawling are all part of the same spectrum. Movement play simply adds the missing piece: curiosity.
Some people like to layer these drills into their warm-ups. Others use them as active recovery days or micro-breaks between longer workouts. There’s no wrong approach. As long as you’re exploring, you’re improving.
The Payoff: Joy, Confidence, and Capability
Here’s the thing most people miss: fun is a performance enhancer. When training includes an element of play, the nervous system engages differently. You move with less tension and more fluidity. Your brain releases dopamine, which strengthens learning and habit formation. It’s the same reason kids pick up new skills so quickly: they’re having fun while they do it.
Movement play also builds the kind of quiet confidence that’s hard to quantify. When you can drop to the ground and get back up effortlessly, when you can hang your bodyweight from your arms or balance on a narrow surface, you carry yourself differently. You move through the world with more assurance.
I’ve seen clients who once felt fragile rediscover their sense of capability through these practices. The woman who couldn’t kneel without pain now rolls and crawls with ease. The man who thought his shoulders were “just stiff from age” now hangs daily and can finally reach overhead without discomfort. These aren’t isolated wins; they’re reminders of what’s possible when you start moving like a human again.
And the best part? It’s fun. Laughter and movement do something powerful together. They reconnect you to your body in a way that traditional exercise often doesn’t. You stop thinking about calories and start thinking about capability. You stop chasing numbers and start chasing possibilities.
An Invitation to Move Differently
Your body was designed to move, not just in straight lines or predictable patterns, but in all directions and through all kinds of challenges. Crawling, rolling, hanging, climbing, balancing… these aren’t fringe activities. They’re the foundation of athleticism and the essence of longevity.
Play isn’t the opposite of hard work. It’s how hard work becomes sustainable. It’s how you keep showing up year after year without burning out or breaking down. The more you explore movement, the more you realise that the real goal of training isn’t to master a lift or hit a number. It’s to build a body that lets you do the things you love for as long as possible.
So here’s your challenge: find one way to make your movement a little more playful this week. Hang from something. Crawl a few steps. Balance. Roll. Move in a way that makes you smile. If you’re local to Abbotsford, come join us at The BTG to learn more about how we weave this approach into our small-group training (feel free to reach out through our Contact Us page). You’ll be surprised how something that looks like play can feel like progress.
Because the best athletes, at any age, are the ones who never stopped playing.