Do Planks Actually Do Us Any Good?

The plank. One of the most common exercises we see out there. It is meant to be one of the key exercises to help get a “strong core”, a good six pack and even help with back pain. If you search “plank” on Google, you will find many different variations of how to do the plank.

But is it really that effective? Do we really get what we want from it? Is it even worth doing?

If you don’t know a plank is an exercise where you on your front holding your body weight of the ground, resting on either your elbows or your hands and your toes (think of a starting push up position). Its intention is to work your “core” muscles.

The Plank is not a Pilates exercise

Many people think the plank came from Pilates, but actually if you refer to the book “Pilates’ return to life through contrology” by Joseph Pilates you will notice there is no “plank” exercise. There is however an exercise “The leg pull – front” which looks similar but has different intention.

As mentioned before, most people’s intention to strengthen their “core”. However here are a few points where people go wrong:

• Alignment –To have any chance of working our “core” correctly then we need to understand a neutral pelvis and a neutral spine. In ‘neutral’ our body is keeping the balance between our abdominal muscle and our back muscles. Performing this move (or any other “core” move for that matter) out of alignment will cause the abdominal and back muscles to be overworked and/or under worked. We usually see this going wrong in the plank when people choose to ‘tuck’ their tailbone under or over arch their lower back. These are a couple of ways that people compensate to get through the plank, however needless to say by compensating like this the core muscle won’t be worked as intended and if you are suffering back pain, chances are it will make it worse. It’s also worth noting; when people do planks on their elbows they almost always round their shoulders to create extra stability, not a good idea (unless you enjoy having “rounded shoulders”)

 

• Not understanding stability muscles – Many us still believe we get “core” strength by carrying out lots of exercises such as planks, sit up’s, crunches etc. Refer to John Gibbon’s “Function anatomy of SI joint” we will read about the inner abdominal unit. The inner abdominal unit consists of Pelvic floor, Diaphragm, Transverse abdominals & multifidus. These muscles provide stability to the spine. It is my view that we need to have good activation of all these muscles to give any exercise designed at improving stability a chance to work. Without understanding activation of these ‘inner abdominal unit’ muscles during the plank it is likely our body will compensate again, by using and overloading (not the correct muscles either) other muscles to get through plank.

 

• Quality not quantity – Gyms, health clubs and exercise classes can be quite a competitive environment and the plank is one of those exercises that brings out that competitive edge to people, but does doing the plank for longer than the person next to you really give you the most benefit? Probably not. Why, because to beat that person next to us (or to event beat ourselves) we will do what it takes, whether it is coming out of correct alignment, using the wrong muscles etc. Yes it may make the time on the screen look good, but will it actually does any good... It’s unlikely.

 

• Do we even need to plank? – Its all too easy to say that we need to do the plank to “strengthen our core”, but is it not worth considering why our abdominals could be appearing weak? How do we even know our abdominals our weak? There are many different factors that result in apparent “weak abdominals”... and most of them aren’t answered by doing the plank.

I hope this gives you a few things to think about. I am not going to say that you should definitely not do the plank (although people who attend my Pilates class will know a much more effective option we can do), I would just urge you just to think about the points brought up in this article.

If you need any more help or information, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Thanks for reading.

​Reference
Pilates/Robbins: PIlates' Return to life through contrology p92-93
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About the author
I am a Manual Therapist covering a range of different disciplines including massage & Biomechanics. I also run small specialist Pilates classes around Corfe Mullen, Broadstone, Wareham, Wimborne & Poole. Instead of just purely rubbing the pain, I always look to see if I can find a potential cause (or causes of the pain) and then work on treating this.