Exercise of the Week: Bear Mountain

No matter what sport you play, you use your whole body. To develop the total body strength you need to improve, your exercises should focus on generating explosive power from the ground up for both upper- and lower-body exercises.

Doug Crashley, Crash Conditioning president and director of athletic development, took this philosophy to heart in creating the ultimate explosive, full-body exercise. He calls it Bear Mountain.

Bear Mountain is a combination of five different functional exercises that require muscle activation throughout the body. Not only are you improving explosive power and core stability, but you’re also training to fight through the fatigue that you typically experience during a play or shift. “It’s a great exercise as far as pushing [athletes] and creating much power quickly and effectively,” Crashley says. “We are producing power over and over again and trying to work past fatigue.”

Conquering Bear Mountain isn’t easy, but its potential to transform you into an athletic beast is worth the sweat and pain.

• Assume athletic stance
• Hold bar above knees, then perform Clean
• Catch Clean in quarter-squat position, then drive up out of squat
• Perform Front Squat
• Drive up to start position, then perform Push Jerk
• Lower bar behind head and rest on traps, then perform Back Squat
• Drive up to start position, then perform Push Press
• Return to start position; repeat for specified reps

Sets/Reps: 3x5