Seeing how well you can hold a plank is a great way to test how strong your core really
is.
But the kind of plank that you are doing is going to tell me the real story.
[Music Intro]
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere AthleanX.com.
Today I want to talk to you about planks.
Yes, we know that they are a good way to measure your core strength.
A lot of people use them as a time test, to see how long you can hold it for.
But to me that doesn't really matter so much.
It is the kind of plank that you are doing because slight variations in your body and
the way that you position it, can make the exercise completely different.
So let me take you down and show you exactly how this works out and how you can make them
more challenging as you get stronger.
Remember guys, this is what Athlean-X is all about.
It is not just throwing some program at you at saying, "go get them guys, good luck."
It is about matching your ability levels.
Showing you the science behind the strength so you can always make an exercise more difficult
and continue to grow with the program, not just about having a 90 day program and you
are done in 90 days.
So first and foremost, as basic as it gets in rehab-someone trying to get a little back
of core strength.
Start off in that quadrant press position, hands and knees down.
Now what is the main difference between this, and when you put your feet out behind you
is just the length of the lever arm.
Now by bringing my feet back more behind me, that lever arms on the abs that are doing
the work, are a little bit longer.
So now I have to work just a little bit harder on that position.
What you are trying to do is to keep the back of your head flat and level with your shoulder
blades and with your tailbone.
Everything sort of sits level at this angle.
Now if you have a little bit longer arms you are going to hang more a little bit.
As long as you are keeping everything straight, you are not allowing the abs to break and
sag down, you should be OK.
Now people ask "Is this more difficult?"
Or "Why is this more or less difficult than any other position?"
Well, if you bring it straight down to the ground, now you have another aspect that is
in play.
Now you are taking out the strength of the chest.
The mechanical advantage that you had up here when we had our chest in play, that can help
out a lot and our shoulder blades are supported by our arms.
In other words the structure of our back here and our shoulder blades can pretty much just
rest in the joint right here.
It is actually getting pressed on the floor.
It is easier to hold that position than it is here.
Now I keep the chest out of it for the most part.
Now I am relying a lot more on the abs to hold the play.
This area here is now more dependent as well-the inner scapular area-because I don't have the
ability again to rest in and lock into the joints.
I now have to rely more on the strength in-between my shoulder blades.
So this is a more difficult variation.
Now if I want to make that harder I have to change the elevation angle so that now I am
up onto a bench.
What this does, is increases the likelihood that I would sag to succumb to gravity, basically.
Now I have a bigger potential to cave in.
So now I have to resist even more to core to be able to hold that.
Another element that you can continue to progress to is: your base of support.
The wider your base of support-I will come this way so you can see it- the easier the
exercise is.
So if I have my hands out here and my feet wide, I am going to be able to hold it a lot
longer than I can if everything is nice and close together, because now I have a tendancy
to rock side to side and I have to prevent that.
So more muscles, more work to do that.
Same thing back up here too, this is an easier version than everything stacked together.
So we talked about lever arm.
We talked about base of support.
What if we did one killer variation.
No Athlean-X exercise and no video is complete without one.
So Let's give ourselves a little bit of a challenge here.
We are going to incorporate all of that.
We are going to narrow our base of support and we are going to lengthen that lever arm.
We are going to do that by taking out a weight plate, holding it out in front of us here
and doing our plank that way.
So again weight plate out in front of you, lengthen the lever arm.
Feet behind me, lengthen the lever arm.
Base of support very narrow.
Suspension: remember when I put my feet up on the bench, we had that suspension involved?
Hands above the ground: suspension.
So we had a lot more work being done.
This is kind of a combination of all those things.
Here, come out, feet behind.
[Exercises]
A lot more difficult.
you have to stabilize this plate.
And down.
So next time someone asks you how long you can hold a plank,say "What kind?" because
the kind of plank that you are doing can have a much drastic difference between the way
it feels on your body, and how you can do on it.
This is the point of Athlean-X training.
Asking somebody how much they bench, right, they are going to gauge how strong you are.
I say that I don't care because I know as an athlete there are so many ways I can expose
a weakness into you regardless of how much you bench.
If you want to start looking like an athlete, you have to start training like one.
It is going to expose a lot of different areas that how much you bench is not going to cover.
The same thing here.
How long you can hold a plank is not going to cover.
If you really want to fortify your body, and be as athletic on the inside as you are on
the outside, you are going to have to start following a program that does that.
Hopefully as the many guys on Team Athlean already know, we have done that.
We have put that together on Athlean-X.
I would love for you to join us here on Team Athlean.
Guys I am going to be back here next week.
Another video.
Keep your feedback coming.
Tell me how long you can hold that plank that I just did.
I will see you back here in 7 days.