Planks: The Little Exercise that Could.
Take a tour online looking for a quick and “easy” way to boost your workout or a find a short but effective workout and you will find the plank. While the plank isn’t really as easy as it looks, it does have quite a few benefits both physically and mentally Planks work all of your upper, lower, and oblique abdominal muscles by doing side and standard planks. Planks can also help you build up strength to do push-ups, as well as the strength of your lower back. Proper plank form not only helps you build your stabilizer muscles, but also promotes good posture long after you are done with your plank workout.
While the physical benefits of planks are a bit obvious at least while you are holding your perfect plank. The plank also has some mental benefits as well. While all exercise can reduce stress, planks hit right where it hurts by helping to stretch muscles that commonly stiffen through out your day, especially if you sit at a desk all day. Planks in many ways can also improve your mood through an almost meditation like trance you have to maintain while holding your plank. Checking out mentally for the time you are holding the plank not only helps with stress but also helps you forget the pain of holding the plank. There is some research that doing planks has been to shown to help with some of the symptoms of depression and help to reduce symptoms of anxiety.
Not bad for an exercise that best perks is that it can be done practically anywhere. No need to head to the gym or even carves out tons of time. Even doing a plank routine for 5 minutes can show improvements. While the plank is an all body workout, it alone not helps you lose weight or get ready to run a marathon. You will still need to maintain a healthy diet, get your cardio in, and hit the gym, but adding planks to all that will help you see results that much faster.
If you are going to get results from planks you have to know how to do a plank.
- Get in push up position
- Bend your elbows at 90 degrees. Make sure your elbows are directly beneath your shoulders and hold your body in a straight line.
- Curl your toes under.
- Engage your abs by tilting your pelvis and pulling your belly button toward your spine.
- Keep your neck and spine neutral while you flex your abdominals and squeeze your glutes.
- Hold. If you are just starting out hold for 20 seconds for 3 reps and increase your hold time, as you get better.
The Plank is an easy fix for a busy day where you can only squeeze in 5 minutes for a work out, and in those 5 minutes not only can you help your body but also your mind. Looks like you lost your excuse to not get in a work out today.