The Saturday Review: PLANK & Core | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

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It’s been a little while since we’ve reviewed an exercise around here but there’s one that I consider one of my most important in everything that I do and that’s the plank.

It is so simple it hurts.

Literally.

You just need your body and some space and you can do them almost anywhere and they do amazing things for your body (sorta like kegels.)

But there is a reason that the plank is so important. It’s because our core is so important. The core is not just the center of our bodies, it’s the center of everything we do.

Everything we do, starts at our core both physically and metaphorically.

Your running form? Based on core strength.

Your swimming form? Based on core strength.

Your bike speed? Based on core strength.

Without core strength, your form slips, which causes you to use other muscles to compensate (or overcompensate) and overusing muscles when they’re not necessarily supposed to be used can lead to injury.

It all works together and when the core gets stronger, everything gets stronger.

Your core consists of your inner and outer core. The inner core is all of the muscles surrounding your spine. The outer core is the muscles you see, the famous “sixpack” that we all strive for and the obliques.

When the inner core is weak, it causes:

  • back pain
  • slouching
  • lack of balance/stability
  • lack of speed (we have the need… the NEED FOR SPEED!)

Among other things of course. And you can’t have a strong outer core unless you have a strong inner core. To be perfectly honest, I’m not concerned about the sixpack abs. I mean, sure it’d be nice. But what I’m concerned about is throwing the rest of my body & muscles out of whack because of my weak core. So for the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of plank.

Plank on the floor.

Switching from plank on your elbows to plank on your hands every 30 seconds.

If you want to make the core work harder, plank on a stability ball.

Then there are side planks.

Leave a comment below if you plank. Better yet, go do a plank, then leave a comment on how long you held it!

If you need help in doing a plank, Christy did a series demonstrating the plank that you can watch here!

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