If you’re just starting on your fitness journey, you may find it a bit intimidating. After all, there are many different workouts, safety tips, and essential equipment to learn about before you even get started. Fortunately, though, not all workouts are so complex. Many of them require little to no equipment, are easy to pick up, and will remain a challenging staple in your workout routine for years to come. Today, we’re going to be talking about one such workout: planks. Here’s everything you need to know about planks, including how to do them, what muscles they target, and how you benefit from them.
How to Do a Plank
First off, let’s go over how to do a plank. It’s not difficult to figure out, though the workout itself makes for a great challenge. To get started, you’ll want a set of comfortable workout clothes and a workout mat for traction. Find a large, flat space on the floor and lay out the mat. Then, get on your hands and knees on the mat. Place your forearms on the mat, in a position where your thumbs naturally face the ceiling. Then, straighten your legs, transferring the weight from your knees to your feet. Now, simply hold that position for as long as you can, and try to increase the duration of your planks over time.
Proper Plank Form
While planks are simpler to figure out than many other exercises, they aren’t without their challenges. It’s easy to use bad form without realizing if you don’t know what to look for, and in the long run, using that bad form can cause unnecessary strain or even damage certain muscles. Here are a few of the most common planking mistakes to avoid to ensure that you’ll get the most out of your workout.
Not Keeping Your Body Straight
In many cases, people will unconsciously shift different parts of their body to reduce strain during a plank, but this defeats the purpose of the workout and may even be harmful to other muscles. Typically, people will either point their butt up, sag their shoulders, or bend their knees while planking. This will affect the stability of your plank, disengage the muscles that planks are meant to target, and put increased strain on other muscles that have to pick up the slack. To remedy this, continuously check yourself without planking to make sure your body is completely straight. For reference, you should be almost completely parallel to the ground.
Holding Breath
Many people suck in air and hold their breath as an involuntary response to the pressure of planking. However, this tends to make the plank more difficult than it needs to be, both because your body isn’t getting enough oxygen and because other muscles may tense up in response to breath-holding.
What Muscle Groups Do Planks Target?
With a bit of advice on technique out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss what muscle groups benefit most from planks. Like push-ups, planks are an extremely versatile exercise that can serve as a full-body workout if you do them regularly and with proper form. Here are a few of the primary targets for plank exercises, as well as the benefits you’ll notice by strengthening them.
Shoulders and Arms
Because so much weight rests on your shoulders and arms during a plank, you’ll likely notice a noticeable difference after planking for a while. Working your shoulders and arms out regularly leads to greater upper body strength, better posture, improved stability, and other such benefits.
Core
Your core is about as important of a workout target as its name would suggest, and the full-body exertion of planks works it perfectly. Strengthening your core is a great way to increase your lean muscle mass and tone while reducing risk of injury and helping to achieve an optimal balance between muscle groups.
Lower Back
The lower back is often forgotten when it comes to workouts, but its role is incredibly important. Fortunately, planks are a great way to challenge and strengthen your lower back muscles, allowing you to reap the benefits of a strong lower back. Your lower back supports most of your weight, so having strong lower back muscles can help protect you from serious spine injuries, prevent back pain later in life, and help you to feel more fit in general.
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