Balanced Fit Tips: Perfect the Plank

Happy Hump Day! Also known as Work It Wednesday here at The Balanced Berry. I hope you are having a fabulous week so far. In honor of Work It Wednesday, I would like to introduce a segment called Balanced Fit Tips: bite-sized fitness tips that can benefit everyone, no matter your fitness level. To kick things off, I want to chat about one of my favorite exercises – the plank!

First, let me take a step back. Since starting this little blog of mine, I have received a ton of questions from readers, friends and family asking about how they can start working out and improving their health. I am so honored, and love helping people with these topics, however there isn’t an easy step by step answer to such broad requests (although this post is a great place to start). Thus, I figured I would start gradually creating a library of tips – and Balanced Fit Tips was born!

Now back to this plank business…

I love planks, and incorporate different variations of the exercise into my fitness routine every week. If you’re looking to tighten the abs, strengthen the back to relieve back pain, or just improve your overall strength – planks should be your jam.

A few tips to help you plank it out:
• Whether on your knees or toes, your body needs to be in a straight line from the top of your head to your tailbone. Your spine should be in a neutral position, and your hips shouldn’t be up in the air or drooping.

• Engage your core. What does that mean? Well it doesn’t mean just sucking in your stomach and calling it good. Instead, brace the muscles of your core and squeeze your glutes as if you were preparing for an outside force to hit you. Maintain this for the entire duration of your plank. If you’re shaking, you’re doing it right!

• While performing a straight-arm plank, be sure to keep your wrists beneath your elbows. The arms should not be reaching forward.

• While performing an elbow plank, keep the elbows below the shoulders and the forearms firmly planted on the ground – this will ensure you’re properly engaging your core.

• A good beginner modification is to begin on your knees – the same rules for keeping the spine in a neutral position apply!

Variations
Have you mastered your standard plank in the prone (face down) position? Try some fun variations:

• The Side Plank: when performing a side plank, keep the tips stacked on top of one another (you don’t want to be tilted backwards or forwards). Again keep the wrist (or elbow) beneath the shoulder. If you aren’t quite ready to dive into the full side-plank, lower your bottom knee to rest on the ground.

• Plank March: if you want to kick your elbow plank up a notch, slowly raise one foot up in the air, lower to the ground, and repeat on the other side to perform a “march”. Be sure to keep those hips steady!

• Alternating Plank Reach: you can also perform a reach by slowly raising one arm forward while performing an elbow plank. Lower, then repeat on the other side. Again the object here is to keep the hips nice and still.

• Elevated Planks: another great variation is to perform a plank with the arms OR feet elevated on a bench or a stability ball while performing a straight-arm plank. Elevating the arms is a great way to progress the exercise for beginnings, and elevating the feet is an awesome advanced option.

Something to try:
When I first started working out, I loved performing “plank intervals” on non-consecutive days 2-3 times a week to build up core strength. Using a timer perform the plank of your choice for 10 seconds, followed by 3 seconds of rest. Repeat for 6-12 rounds! Laughing tomorrow is going to hurt so good…

What are some of your favorite exercises?

What fit tips would you like to see?