Planks are an incredible core exercise. Even though they’re old-fashioned, they’re highly-effective. They have a positive impact on your mind, mood, and attitude.
What’s Your “Core” and Why Is It So Important?
Your core includes your pelvic, abdominal, and back muscles that are broken down into primary as well as secondary muscles.
Your primary core muscles include your diaphragm, erector spinae, rectus abdominis, external and internal obliques, multifidus, transversus abdominis, and pelvic floor muscles.
Your secondary core muscles include your trapezius, latissimus dorsi, and gluteus maximus.
Your core muscles are involved in almost each thing that you do, such as:
– Balance and stability: Your core “connects” the lower and upper parts of your body. That’s why proper stability and balance require a well-conditioned core.
– Routine movements: Every movement that involves torso manipulation requires your core muscles to execute. It includes standing, rotating, sitting, and bending.
– Posture: Good core health plays an important role in maintaining proper posture.
– Back support: About 80% of all Americans experience lower back pain at some point in life. Strong core muscles play a great role in keeping your back healthy.
When it comes to good core health, you should neither under-work nor overwork your core muscles. Undertraining or underworking your core muscles may leave the area weak, whereas overtraining or overworking your abdominal muscles may increase your likelihood of long-term injury.
The Benefits of Planks:
The plank is a simple core exercise, which can be done anywhere and at any time. It can provide your entire body with incredible benefits. It can activate the muscles of your shins, quadriceps, buttocks, shoulders, biceps, and abdomen. The American Council on Exercise notes that practicing the classic plank regularly can lower your risk of upper and lower back pain.
Practicing the classic plank regularly can also:
– Increase your flexibility: This core exercise stretches any posterior muscle group, including your toes, foot arches, hamstrings, collarbone, shoulder blades, and shoulders.
– Enhance your posture: It helps keep your joints and bones in alignment that can encourage good posture.
– Improve your core definition: It targets any major core muscles group.
– Boost your metabolism: It burns more calories than sit-ups or crunches.
It may also stretch your muscles that are most susceptible to tension. It may stretch your shoulders, back, thighs, and legs, and ease stress and tension.
Here Is How to Do It:
You should keep your back straight and your abdominal muscles engaged. You should also breathe in deeply and slowly and breathe out stably.
Even though you can do this exercise without doing stretches first, a simple stretching routine is required, especially if you’ve not worked out in a while.
Here is how to do it:
Hold yourself on your toes and hands in a pre-push-up position and keep your lower and upper body rigid and straight.
Use your forearms to lift yourself up. (Your forearms and upper arms need to create a ninety-degree angle.)
Use your toes and forearms to support your entire body and keep it as straight as you can.
Suck in your abdomen inwards towards your spine in order to engage your abdominal muscles.
In case your abdomen is sagging down towards the floor, you shouldn’t hold a thirty-second plank position. In case you must, begin with a ten-second hold and gradually increase the time as your core muscles become stronger.
Remember the basics and give full effort to achieve the benefits of this simple exercise.