Most people plank with their hands and feet too close together, missing core engagement. The correct form uses a gymnast position: tuck your pelvis, flex your glutes and quads hard, and hollow your core by drawing your belly button toward your spine. Stack your rib cage over your pelvis to keep everything locked in place.
In this video, we're going to show you the right way to do a plank. So we've got Manami here today. First, Manami, I want you to show the folks how we do a bad plank. Do a plank that most people do. So put your hands super close together, super close together, feet close together as well. And yeah, and people probably dip. Yeah, you go. Perfect. That's how most people do a plank. And in this position, nothing is really happening. Nothing's engaged. So the antithesis to this, the opposite of this is let's put our hands nice and wide. Let's get our feet nice and wide. Now we want to assume what we call gymnast position, right? So the gymnast position is she's going to tuck her pelvis under. So just do that again for us so that people can see it. So her pelvis is here right now, and we're going to turn the pelvis under. So it's going to stack on top. So you can see this position, flex your bum cheeks as hard as you can, flex your quads as hard as you can, lock everything out and bring— draw your belly button in towards your spine, then hollow out from here. In this position, now she's working and she's working hard. So what we're doing in this position is we're stacking the rib cage and stacking the pelvis up. So the pelvis is coming up, rib cage is coming down, the belly, if you will, is hollowing out, which is really then engaging the core. Now, if I want to make this a little bit harder, which I do, I'm going to put a little bit of pressure on her. I'm going to like push her, see how she's moving now. Don't move at all. There should be no resistance. I'm going to offer her resistance. And she needs to stay stable and not move. Flex, flex, flex, keep the pelvis stable, that's perfect, rest for just a second. Now rest for a second, now to drive this, to drive this point even further we're going to make it even harder. I know you've been working out for a while so we're going to make this harder, you're up to it, is we're going to do more of a star position plank. So I want you to get really wide with your arms and really wide with the legs, so really go nice and wide, and this will be again harder still. Bring it in because now we have spread the base of support, flex your bum as hard as you can, flex your bum, flex your quads, flex your quads, hollow out, there we go. If you want to make this even harder, we can draw the arms out even more, so just give that a go. Bring your arms out a little wider, a little wider, a little wider, so it's like a star, there we go. Now you can see here, she's working, she's working, the sound effects and everything, bring that pelvis, make sure this is key, You saw her pelvis, then her pelvis started to move. We want to make sure that pelvis stays up. So in your training, the pelvis must stay here for it to be an effective plank. If you've enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to our channel for more great tips.
