A 50-year-old man from China has been exercising by moving around on all fours and climbing trees like a monkey every day for the past three decades.

Chen Haigang, a fitness enthusiast from China’s Shanxi province, attracts attention whenever he exercises in public, due to the bizarre routine he has been practicing for about 30 years. Instead of the popular tai-chi practiced by many of his countrymen, jogging or simple stretching, Chen acts like a monkey, walking on all fours, crouching his back and dangling his arms, and even imitating the primates’ tree-climbing techniques. He has been doing it for three decades now, ever since he was inspired by a monkey at the zoo, and claims that it’s been keeping him in perfect health ever since.

“I started doing this walking exercise when I was about twenty years old,” Chen Haigang told Pear Video. “I often watched the monkeys at the zoo. I thought it looked so fun and I started imitating.”

“[I used to have] little problems like a cold, toothache or tinnitus when I was a farmer working in the countryside. Since I moved to the city for work, I’ve spent my free time doing the [monkey] walking exercise. I can say this – I never need to see a doctor,” the 50-year-old added.

 

Chen originally started imitating a monkey’s walk, but then started climbing trees as a primate as well, swinging from branches, jumping from one to another, and he recently started other animals’ movements into his fitness routine, like the crawl of a crocodile.

The fitness enthusiasts told Pear Video that many people have come up to him to ask about the unique workout over the years, but most of them were too shy to do it in public, which is a shame as it’s “such a great sport”.