Intermediate

Monkey Shuffle

The monkey is animal flow's lateral traveling move, performed side-on with the hands leading and the hips floating across. Unlike the front-facing gorilla, you rotate slightly to travel sideways, so the shoulders press and stabilize while the obliques control the airborne hip swing. It demands smooth coordination and a stable shoulder girdle, and once it flows it makes a light, joint-friendly way to move and condition.

Equipment
Body Weight
Body part
Abs, Shoulder
Type
Cardio, Functional
Muscles worked
Target
Deltoid Anterior, Abdominal External Oblique
Secondary
Triceps Brachii Lateral Head, Rectus Femoris, Adductor Longus, Gluteus Medius
Tertiary
Upper Rectus Abdominals, Trapezius Middle

How to do it

  1. 1

    Crouch side-on to your direction of travel with both hands planted to that side.

  2. 2

    Keep the knees soft and the hips low, weight split between hands and feet.

  3. 3

    Press into the hands and float the hips laterally over them.

  4. 4

    Bring the feet across to land softly beside the hands as your weight shifts.

  5. 5

    Reset the hands further along and repeat to keep traveling sideways.

  6. 6

    Complete the distance one way, then face the other side and return.

Tips

  • Lead with the hands and let the hips follow rather than jumping the feet first.
  • Keep the shoulders stacked and strong as the hips pass over them.
  • Stay low throughout; rising up between reps breaks the flow.
  • Float the hips lightly instead of muscling them, letting the arms carry the shift.

Variations

Common mistakes

  • Both hands land in a narrow base almost touching each other, so there is no room for the hips to pass between them and the shoulders wobble under the shift. Set them roughly shoulder-width apart along your line of travel.
  • Halfway across the floor the body squares up to the front and the move quietly becomes a gorilla shuffle. Stay side-on so the obliques keep controlling the hip swing.
  • The hips fly up high on the float, so what happens next is a drop rather than a transfer and the feet crash down on the far side. Send the hips across, not up.
  • Once the set runs long, the feet start landing behind the hands rather than beside them, and every rep needs an extra shuffle to reset before you can float again.
  • The head drops between the arms, so you lose sight of the floor ahead and start placing the next hand blind, which is when a wrist lands at an angle it did not expect.

Frequently asked

How many monkey shuffles should you do when you are new to the exercise?
Treat the first sessions as practice rather than conditioning: five or six floats to one side, five or six back, repeated three or four times with as much rest as you want. Learn it by placing the hands, shifting the weight and stepping the feet across before you try to float them. Once the pattern flows, string it into 30-second stretches of continuous travel and use it as a conditioning round, or drop it into a movement flow between other animal shapes.
How do I make the monkey shuffle easier or harder?
For an easier version, step the feet across instead of floating them and cover less ground per rep, which keeps the shoulders under less load; raising the hands onto a low step shortens the distance the hips have to travel. To make it harder, cover more ground on each float, pause for a beat with the hips stacked over the hands before the feet land, or alternate a monkey with a gorilla shuffle so you never fully reset between shapes.
What is the monkey shuffle for, and who should avoid it?
It builds shoulder stability under a moving load, oblique control, and the coordination to travel sideways on all fours, which is why it shows up in animal flow work and before ground-based training. Leave it alone if your wrists or shoulders are painful taking bodyweight, and wait until you can hold a steady quadruped position without the hips sagging or swaying. As a strength drill it has a low ceiling, since the load is fixed at your own weight; its value is coordination and joint-friendly conditioning.

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