What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
I fucking hate planks.
There, I said it.
I've got your attention too, probably.
The fact of the matter is this: it's not that the exercise is that bad.
It's actually a good exercise for those that it's challenging for.
And that might be a very, very small subset of the people that are watching this video
because I feel that the plank has become the number one reason for mediocrity when it comes
to functional ab strength.
We spend so much time on the ground mastering a variation of a static plank.
Whether it be in a forward position, or with it being a side plank position; the fact of
the matter is, you can handle this, and you can handle a lot more.
If you're not challenging yourself with more difficult variations of this exercise, then
we have a problem.
So what we need to do is, we need to show you other variations of this exercise that
are far more challenging than a standard plank that will allow you to get much more out of
it.
Including, hip strength and stability, ab and core anti-rotation stability, things that
are much more important than just being able to stay like this for as long as you possibly
can.
As a matter of fact, if you can hold this position for a minute you don’t need to
be doing static planks anymore.
So what should you be doing?
Well, you could start doing what I'm doing here.
The first thing I want to target, if I want to take my planks to a much more functional
and productive level is I've got to start controlling rotation.
By doing so, I'm actually getting the obliques involved as well.
So what I can do here is this thread the needle variation.
Now, as I come through I'm getting top down rotation.
I'm keeping my legs static, and I'm moving from the top rotating from the top on the
bottom.
This is challenging, okay?
We could come in here, reach all the way through, and come up to the top.
Now, it doesn't have to always be top moving on the bottom when we can get the bottom moving
on a fixed top.
We could do that here with these alternating toe taps.
The key here is not to fall forward and fall backward, but slowly tap forward, and tap
backward.
You can see that you're controlling the rotation here, and yes, I'm working really, really
hard.
We could also elevate the plank a little bit here too, and have a hip drop.
Now when we do the hip drop here I can get rotation of just the hips.
So now we're focusing on a hip rotation down, and then as I'm lifting up, I'm not just lifting
statically straight up and down.
I'm getting the rotation component here, too.
That is overlooked, and I'm telling you, you can do this.
You can do this, but you have to start opening your eyes to the possibilities that you can
do a lot more than just hold a static side plank.
Beyond that, hip strength.
My God!
We have the weakest hips going.
So it's an epidemic, along with glute weakness, that we have to be able to address this weakness
in our hips.
We could do it with a side plank.
What you do here is you stagger your feet, and now you move your bottom leg, and we move
our bottom leg to work the top leg because you can see here that the top leg – the
adductor on the top leg, on the hip – has to stay really, really strong and contracted
here to be able to hold us up into the side plank as we move that bottom leg.
We could do the reverse as well.
We could keep the bottom leg there, and now move the top leg.
We're now working the abductor; the outside hip muscles of that bottom leg.
If they were to give in I would simply drop down to the floor.
So we can move our top leg dynamically.
Again, much more involved than a static plank, and get so much more out of it.
I mean, even a few reps of this and I feel it burning in my hips because I too suffer
from weaker hips than I want.
So you want to make sure you address these as well.
Again, back to the other variation, too.
We can add combinations to this exercise.
Make it more interesting.
Make it more fun.
This is a plank press.
It's kind of like a pushup, it's kind of like a plank, it's not like a standard plank.
So we rotate down, we let our chest come down toward the floor, and we push ourselves back
off of it.
You can see the different variations here.
The idea is that standard planks are most likely not challenging you.
As I said in the beginning, if one minute you can hold a standard plank – whether
it be on your elbows, or forearms, or even up on your hands, or on the side plank position,
you can do them all – forget it.
Move on.
It's going to hold back the level of strength that you can develop.
More like I said in the beginning, your functional ab strength, because they're meant to do a
lot more than just hold us in one position.
As I said, don’t let them bring you down and cause you to have mediocre ab strength
when you have so much more in you.
Guys, I hope you've found this video helpful.
If you're looking for a program that will challenge you in many, many, many ways, all
three planes of motion – not just sticking us on one and saying "Stay there and hang
out.
We'll be back in a while."
I'm saying training like an athlete.
Then head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training program.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what you want to see and I'll do my best to do that and cover it for you
here in a future video.
All right, guys.
I'll see you soon!