This phrase is a caution against tackling something complicated or advanced before you have learned the basic skills it depends on. It is most often used to tell someone to slow down, go back to the fundamentals, and build up gradually rather than skipping straight to the difficult part. Less often, it is turned the other way round, as encouragement to push past caution and attempt something beyond a safe comfort zone. Either way, the underlying idea is the same: certain things have to come in order, and skipping a stage tends to cause problems later.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘don’t try to run before you can walk’?
The phrase draws directly on the stages of a child’s physical development. A baby pulls itself upright, learns to balance, and only once walking is secure does running become possible. Anyone watching a small child go through that sequence can see the point being made: trying to skip a stage, to run before the legs and balance are ready for it, usually ends in a fall. The saying takes that everyday observation and applies it to any skill or undertaking, from learning a trade to running a business.
No specific first use or named coiner for this exact wording has been traced, and it appears to have settled into English as a common-sense proverb rather than one that can be pinned to a particular writer or date. It exists alongside, and is really the negative mirror of, the positive form, we must learn to walk before we can run, which is recorded as a proverb carrying the same lesson, that a basic skill has to be mastered before more complex ones are attempted. Both versions rest on the identical physical image and are used interchangeably depending on whether the speaker wants to warn against haste or recommend patience.
The caution this phrase expresses sits close to other proverbs that warn against overreaching, such as don’t bite off more than you can chew, though that phrase concerns taking on too large a task, while this one is specifically about sequence and preparation.