Crocodile Crawl / Crocodile Walk

Submission 2,311

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About

Crocodile Crawl or Crocodile Walk is a physical exercise that involves a person walking on their hands and feet with their elbows bent, moving in a way similar to how crocodiles move. In the early 2020s, the exercise notably achieved virality in China. In September 2023, a video of a Chinese exercise club participating in the activity also went viral, inspiring memes and reactions online shortly after.

History

Crocodile Crawl, also known as Crocodile Walk,^[1] is a type of physical exercise during which a person walks on their hands and feet, bending their elbows and stretching their legs sideways, similar to the way a crocodile or an alligator moves on land (demonstration video shown below).

Spread in China

At some point in 2020, Chinese exercise club 勇者无敌 (founded by Zhu Jianling) started incorporating the exercise into its routine, sharing the videos of the members exercising on Douyin (China's version of TikTok), with some uploads going viral in the early 2020s.^[2]

For example, a video posted^[3] by the club on January 26th, 2023, received over 58,000 likes in nine months. An upload made on May 14th, 2022, received over 13,000 likes in roughly a year and a half.^[4] On July 1st, 2022, the Facebook^[5] page People's Daily China reposted a video from the page, which received over 1,200 reactions and 30,000 views on Facebook in one year.

Online Spread

The exercise first attracted widespread attention outside of China in October 2022 when the Facebook^[6] page Sixth Tone reposted one of 勇者无敌's videos and a CCTV interview with Zhu Jianling. The video (shown below) received over 8.2 million views and 142,000 reactions in one year.

There were only two or three of us working out together. We knew crocodile walking was good for our lumbar and cervical vertebrae. As early as two or three years ago, a dozen or so people came to join us every day. With more and more people joining, our team has grown to about 70 members in less than a year.

In Memes

On Douyin, the videos have been the subject of jokes and memes at least since March 2023. For example, on March 4th, Douyin^[7] user 安徽第一深情 posted a paired video with footage of monsters crawling in Crossfire, with the meme gaining over 270,000 likes in six months. On March 6th, user 小佟 posted an edit that received over 151,000 likes on Douyin^[8] in the same period.

On September 16th, 2023, X^[9] user @ZhejiangToday posted a clip of the club members performing the exercise, crawling in a single file along a park trail. The video received over 540 retweets and 1,300 likes in three days.

On X, the video inspired video caption memes as users quoted the post with humorous captions. For example, on September 16th, X^[10] user @flughey quoted @ZhejiangToday's post, commenting, "Ants when they smell a tasty morsel:." The post garnered over 7,400 retweets and 60,400 likes in three days (shown below).