Never Do the Plank … (It Can Do More Harm Than Good)

by Brian Klepacki, MS, CSCS, FMS2

 

I’m Coach Brian, creator and author of Crunchless Core, and everybody’s heard of the plank. Everybody does the plank. Everybody thinks that the plank is the best core exercise on the planet. However, you should never do the plank – if you have these issues. The plank is a great exercise. Don’t get me wrong; we’re not bashing the plank. But the plank isn’t as beneficial and isn’t as easy as a lot of people make it out to be.

If you have back pain, or if you have shoulder pain, you should not be doing the plank. The plank is good for strengthening the back and shoulders, but if you have back pain the plank is not going to fix it. It’s not going to help it; it’s not going to just get rid of back pain. It’s good to prevent back pain.

Let’s talk about the shoulders for a second. A lot of people dip the head down. They’re pretty much either looking up or looking straight down between their knees. Make sure your chin is tucked in to your head, and bring those shoulders up, which will also bring the lower back up. Perfect!

You should also never do the plank if you have any type of Achilles tendonitis or plantar fasciitis because there’s a lot of tension going on in those areas. So if you’ve ever had a strained calf, your Achilles is stretched out or you’ve had surgery on your Achilles or even plantar fasciitis, common in running and jumping, don’t do the plank because it’s only going to aggravate it even more.

The last reason why you should never do the plank is that if you’re just not physically strong enough to hold the plank in proper position. A lot of people think the plank is one of those exercises you can do for 10, 20 minutes, even up to an hour. There’s no point in that. Stop doing that. It’s proven that the plank is best done in short bursts of holding. I mean, just 10, 20, 30 seconds tops. Because after that usually the body starts fatiguing and you start recruiting different muscles to hold that position. The head drops down, your hips are tilted a little bit. It just kind of gets pointless at that point. So no plank competitions, no long, drawn-out planks in classes, things like that. Use planks in short bursts.

You should never do the plank if you have any back pain, shoulder pain, Achilles or Plantar Fasciitis issues, and you should also never do the plank for a competition or muscular endurance. Do the plank in short bursts. Do the plank when you’re healthy and I guarantee the plank is going to be one of the best core exercises you can do, if you’re doing it right.

Hey, if you’ve got a comment or question about core training, post it down below. I’ll be more than happy to answer it for you. Hey, but we have a report called The 5-Minute Core Workout. It’s an actual workout. It has a bunch of different exercises you can do for the core in five minutes. It’s free and it’s right there. Click that link below, give us your email and the workout is going to be sent to you immediately.

Check out this FREE 5 Minute Core Workout!

 

Have an awesome day! We’ll see you soon.

-Coach Brian

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Glute Strength Benefits – Why You Need Strong Glutes

by Brian Klepacki, MS, CSCS, FMS2

I’m Coach Brian, strength coach here at Critical Bench and also the creator and author of Unlock Your Glutes. We love talking about the glutes, but we also love sharing information about the glutes because the glutes are the powerhouse of the body and they’re crucial to having healthy glutes if you care about having a healthy body.

There are three main benefits of having strong glutes, that I want to share with you and dig a little deeper into why it’s important to have strong glutes. The first benefit is improved posture. Outside of the aesthetics and the looks of the glutes, and we all want healthy looking glutes, posture is probably pretty important, because posture can either make or break your body and the longevity and the quality of your life.

So how do the glutes directly affect your posture? Well, let’s think about it. Your glutes, and I’m talking about the glute max, or your big butt muscles, is responsible for hip extension. When we’re constantly in a seated position, we call it the sitting disease. You’re sitting all the time, your hips are flexed in this position. The hip extensors, the glute max, is elongated. It’s stretched out and your hip flexors are tight. So what ends up happening is your tailbone kind of tucks. Your anterior pelvic is tilting so your gut sticks out so it actually looks like you’ve got a beer belly of sort. And what ends up happening is that it rounds your shoulders and all of a sudden now you’ve got forward head posture all because your glutes are under-stretched and under-activated.

Once you wake up your glutes, you’re going to get them strong enough that they can actually hold and stabilize the hips, which in return helps balance and align the lower body, as well as the upper body. The glutes are, again, an integral part of connecting the upper body and lower body and it’s important for you to have strong glutes to maintain the hip function, the glutes function, which is the stabilize the hips. Yeah, it’s a lot of information, but just know directly that the glutes can either have a positive or negative effect on your posture. It’s just how strong or active your glutes are.

The second benefit of strong glutes is improved athletic performance. Even if you’re not an athlete it doesn’t matter, so let’s just say improved performance overall. As you can see, the glutes are the powerhouse of the body. They are responsible for helping you walk, helping you jump, helping you run, helping you climb, helping you push, pull. They’re pretty much responsible for all movements vertically, horizontally, laterally and even just standing there in a stabilized position. If you have strong glutes you’re going to run faster, you’re going to jump higher, you’re going to be able to walk longer, stand on your feet longer. It’s important to have strong glutes because, again, your glutes are the powerhouse of the body and you want them to be as strong and efficient as possible.

The third benefit, it’s a very important one, especially as a strength coach, is injury prevention. If your glutes are weak, there’s a good chance that there’s going to be an injury taking place related to weakened glutes or even inhibited glutes, where your glutes are not as active.

So think about it. When your glutes are not doing what they should be doing, or any muscle for that matter, secondary and stabilizing muscles kind of have to take the place of the primary muscle and resulting in over-worked and over-stressed secondary muscles. So if your glutes are not firing properly, your lower back is going to take some of the work, your hip flexors are going to take some of the work and your knees are going to take some of the work and this is not a good thing because the glutes are designed to do glute functions. The lower back is handling lower back functions, the knee is taking care of the knee stuff. We don’t want the knees taking care of the glutes. We don’t want the lower back taking care of the glutes.

As you can see, if the glutes are inactive and inhibited because you’re not doing the appropriate strength training that we recommend, your glutes will become an issue for other parts of your body. Strengthen your glutes and you’re going to, hopefully, prevent injuries from taking place. And that’s probably one of the most important things that you should do when you’re talking about your health, is to make sure you’re staying as healthy as long as possible.

All right, so out of these three benefits I hope that you’ve learned something, and hopefully you’re going to take this information and apply it to your training. You might even transform your training just a little bit. No need to fear because we have so many glute exercise videos that I know you’re going to enjoy watching and you’re definitely going to get some benefits from those videos. Make sure to subscribe to our channel first, and then you can search within our channel  for glute exercises, glute building exercises, glute strengthening, upper glutes, lower glutes, middle glutes. Just type in glutes. You’re going to see a whole great list of videos that you definitely got to check out. Not only that, but we have a program that will unlock your glutes. It’s going to help transform your glutes, but we also want to give you something for free because we know that not everybody is going to want to purchase something!

Check out the FREE 5-Minute Glute Report

Comments, questions, or suggestions – post them below. I’d love to interact with you!

-Coach Brian

 

For More Great Resources, please visit our CriticalBench Fan Page, http://www.facebook.com/criticalbench

For the BEST YouTube Videos on the Planet, please visit our main CriticalBench Channel, http://www.youtube.com/criticalbench

and our CriticalBench COMPOUND Channel, http://www.youtube.com/gymexercises

And if you haven’t yet, please start following us on Instagram @thecriticalbench and also on Pinterest www.pinterest.com/thecriticalbench