I too found Colemak lacking. IMO it's because the most relevant keyboard layout metrics are

1) how well words break down into same hand "finger rolls", which help typing accuracy and to lesser extend speed

2) how often the same finger has to type multiple characters in succession

3) how often the same hand has to reach for the more awkward middle keys (y and b in qwerty) while also doing something with the middle finger

Finger travel distance is irrelevant. Common characters ought to be on the home row because your fingers can't roll across the top and bottom row.

Dvorak optimizes these very well. Workman seems to split bigrams across two hands, which prevents rolls. I would also recommend binding alt-gr to control in addition to making caps lock backspace.