The Pushup Climber is a combination of a Pushup and a High Plank Climber. It is an excellent all-over upper body exercise, engaging your chest, shoulders, arms and abdominals. Perform the Pushup Climber with a rigid core.
How To Do It
1. Lie chest-down with your hands at shoulder level, palms flat on the floor and slightly more than shoulder-width apart, your feet together and parallel to each other. Your legs are straight and your toes are tucked under your feet. Alternatively, the pushup can be performed with your knees touching the ground.
2. Press against the ground with your hands, straightening your arms as you push your body away from the floor. Keep your palms in the same position and your body rigid. Try not to bend or arch your upper or lower back as you push up.
3. Exhale as you straighten your arms and pause at the top. At this point, your body should be rigid, as if a steel bar is running from your ankles to your shoulders.
4. Bring your right knee (bending your leg, of course) as far forward as you can. To do this, activate your gluteals to achieve a path to the side of your body, not below it.
3. Hold for an instant with your knee far forward, then return your leg to the starting pushup position, using the reverse path.
4. Repeat the motion with your left leg. That’s one rep.
5. Reversing the pushup motion, lower your body to the floor in a controlled manner. That’s one rep.
Online Personal Trainer Tips
1. Keep your eyes a few inches forward rather than down at the floor. The first contact you make with the floor with any part of your face should be with your chin, not your nose. This will help prevent a truncated range of motion.
2. Keep your body rigid throughout the entire movement. Imagine a steel rod between your ankles and shoulders or knees and shoulders, depending on which lower body contact point you choose.
3. With a rigid body, your hips, stomach and chest should contact the ground at approximately the same time.
4. For the high plank climber portion of the exercise, the motion of your leg is a lot like when you were a kid (or at least when I was), pretending you were doing an “army crawl” along the ground, the difference being that neither your belly nor your right knee should touch the ground. Your torso, midsection and legs should remain in a flat plane.
