Spicy exercise for your whole body: core, shoulders, triceps and condition
The mountain climber is a great exercise for your whole body. You use your core, shoulders and triceps and you also train your endurance and balance. How do you properly run mountain climbers?
With mountain climbers you pretend you’re running up a mountain, but in place. You can do this exercise on any – preferably non-slip – surface: inside on a mat or outside on the street or on a lawn.
- Stand in a high plank, as if you are going to do a push-up. You can place your hands on the floor or on an elevation (a bench, for example).
- Place your hands slightly wider than your shoulders. Your shoulders should be a little further forward than your wrists.
- Tighten your abs so that you keep your back straight. Make sure your buttocks don’t go up in the air, but don’t sink to the floor either.
- Bring your right knee towards your chest as far as possible, without lifting your hips and buttocks. If you are very flexible, your knee may come all the way to the chest, if you are not that flexible, you will not make it. That’s not bad at all, bring your knee forward as far as you can. As long as you lift the hips and buttocks as little as possible.
- Put your right foot back.
- Now it’s your left knee’s turn: bring it to the chest and then put your left foot back.
- This way you alternate between left and right.
- Try walking slowly at first. If it goes well, then increase the speed until you are, as it were, running on the spot.
- If your feet slip, it may help to bring your shoulders forward a little further. If you lean too far back, your feet will slide faster.
Mountain climbers are very tough, but you will notice that soon enough. Your heart rate shoots up and you will probably get tired very quickly. Start with 10x per leg, or try to keep it up for 30 seconds. You can gradually increase this number. Or take a bootcamp lesson: this is also a popular exercise at bootcamp.
