The over used and under utilized Plank.
If you are looking to have better posture, stronger core (every muscle from the bottom of the ribs to the pelvis), stronger butt, and want to get ripped in 15 days!!! Maybe you should try an infomercial. If you want to get real beneficial results, you can’t go wrong with the plank. It does accomplish everything I said except the last part, unless you are already ripped then keep doing what you have been doing.
The plank’s main focus should be to improve posture and should be executed to accomplish that. The way we do that is by great form and awareness of our body. If you look at the pictures, my body is in a straight line as if I was standing up straight. You at home can achieve this by actively squeezing your glutes, abdominals, and making sure you keep your hips in line with your body. Also so we don’t injure ourselves or cause other problems, we need to keep our elbows under our shoulders and not letting our upper body be hanging freely, so push through the floor to have your chest in a good position.
Form Checklist:
• Elbows under your shoulders
• Actively squeezing your glutes
• Squeezing your abdominals
• Hips in line with body
• Pushing through the floor to keep your chest neutral
• Last, keep your entire spine straight
To start off I will take a new client through an elevated plank and progress them through lower angles until we are able to go to the floor. Doing this exercise for 20 seconds at a time. So I like doing high planks on a bench first, then lowering it until they are comfortable a doing a high plank on the floor. Then after the high plank is too easy for them, we will go to the regular plank. So what I recommend for this exercise is to make sure you keep a solid form for the duration of the exercise. Never will a client of mine do a plank from their knees, I’d rather they keep a straight line throughout the whole body so it will be able to transfer to daily living. I like to have my clients reach a maximum of 4 sets of 60 seconds each with solid form, if they lose form we stop the exercise and try again later. Once they are able to do the maximum we go to advance core exercises and rarely do the normal plank again.
If you have any questions or problems, ask them in the comment section. If you need more help you can contact me through e-mail.
-Mark