Mountain Climber Variation For Lower Abs

Most people are familiar with the exercise ‘mountain climbers.’ Whilst these do work your abdominal muscles, as your get more advance and add more reps and speed into them they become primarily a cardiovascular exercise for most people. If this sounds like you and you want to target your lower abs more, try this mountain climber variation.

Standard Mountain Climbers

It is important to note that both this version and the lower abs version I will detail shortly can be made more easy if the exercise is too difficult with your hands on the floor. Simply do it on an incline, so put your hands on a bench, table, chair or whatever you have that will create an incline. Then perform the exercise exactly the same. You are always better off performing an easier version of the exercise with proper technique if the more advanced version feels too difficult.

Adopt a straight arm plank position, hands on the floor. Drive your knees up towards your wrists alternately, making sure you keep your bum down so your back is parallel to the floor. As you get more advanced you want to be jumping from 1 rep into the next so you are basically doing them as quickly as you can.

Mountain Climber Variation For Lower Abs

If you can bang out 40/50+ mountain climbers and want the exercise to be more about your abs (specifically your lower abs) than cardio, then try this variation.

Adopt the same starting position. Firstly you need to slow the whole thing down. And focus on really contracting and engaging your lower abs. So drive the knee up slowly as far as you can, really tensing your abs. When the knee gets as far as it will go, raise your bum up slightly by tilting your pelvis. This tilt needs to come from the hips and everything else stays still. And make sure you are actively contracting your lower abs as you do this. Then slowly lower back down and slowly back to starting positon. Then repeat on the other leg. The key here is understanding this is a slow, controlled movement, you cannot do it with speed. Time under tension and actively engaging the muscles is key.

Conclusion – Mountain Climber Variation For Lower Abs

This is a great exercise for a far more ab focused version of the exercise. Not to say you should stop doing regular mountain climbers. I love that exercise too. But if you are a moderate to advanced exerciser you are not going to be getting much of an ab workout from doing them. They will more be total body/cardio. So as always it’s important to know what you want to get out of the exercise before doing it.