5 Reasons to Plank Everyday

Core stability is fundamental to everything we do, from improving sporting performance to everyday life. Training the core muscles through abdominal and core stability exercises helps to achieve these benefits. And the plank exercise is the most well known; I’ll introduce you to some great benefits of planking every day.

1. Improved Muscle Tone
2. Excellent Balance
3. Better Posture
4. Increased Functional & Sporting Performance
5. Decreased Risk of Injury

Including the plank exercise within your exercise regime will help you build core strength, stability, balance, and proprioception. This will enhance your everyday life and help you achieve the above benefits of a well trained core.

Improves Muscle Tone

Performing the plank exercise on a regular basis results in improved core muscle tone, size, and strength. Isometric exercises require your muscles to constantly maintain tension to hold your body in the desired position.

Aesthetically these results include a flatter, firmer stomach with defined lines of the abdominal muscles. Commonly this is referred to as a ‘6 pack’.

Excellent Balance

The learned outcome of increasing your proprioception is what we mean by balance. Balance is being able to maintain control and react to ensure you maintain good posture and form dureing movements or exercise.

These forces can lead to you losing your balance, your muscles provide constant feedback to your brain about its surroundings and about the forces acting upon them, your muscles send messages via the nerves to the brain in a two-way feedback system which recruits sensory awareness, muscles and joint sensitivity that create this complex system of proprioception.

Think about when you travel on the train. As you get on, the train is stationary and you are stable. The train starts to move and standing still becomes more difficult. And, you react at lightning speed, bracing your core to stop you stumbling down the train.

All your muscles from your toes to your shoulders are reacting and your body is moving bodyweight and putting extra force on one leg to the next.

To sumarise, increased strength, endurance, and conditioning of your corewill enhance your ability and performance when it comes to proprioception.

Better Posture

Good posture is essential to ensure that movements can be performed with minimal strain to joints, ligament, tendons, and muscles including internal organs, nerves, and blood vessels. Being functionally able to move your body in all movement patterns and planes without injury is the result of having good well-balanced posture.

The core is the key building block of your posture, providing essential support at your trunk. Ssupporting your back, it keeps you upright and provides support for all movement patterns to maintain good posture.

A weak core and poor posture can lead to back problems, osteoarthritis and postural conditions. These include Kyphosis, lordosis, and scoliosis, they are deviations from well-balanced posture which can lead to back pain.

A well-trained core helps protect your back, ensuring your trunk can support you and help maintain correct posture.

Increased Functional & Sporting Performance

A well trained core that can react to external forces will benefit all types of sporting disciplines. From throwing a javelin or dodging a punch in boxing, being able to train in sport-specific movements creates muscle memory, improves strength, coordination and proprioception leading to increased performance.

The core muscle group connects nearly all functional movement patterns. The ability of muscle groups to work together enables compound, functional and sport specfic movements possible.

Decreased Risk of Injury

Core stabilization should be the foundation of every workout or training regime and even everyday life. This helps us stay upright, injury free and able to perform at our best. Good posture and improved proprioception help us to reduce the risk of injury.

Training your core to react to sport specific movements will dramatically increase sporting performance and improving strength and endurance in the core muscle group. Protecting the body from injury in sport or everyday life.

You don’t need to be a sportsman or an athlete to benefit from a well-conditioned core. A strong core helps you reduce the risk of injury and perform everyday movements. Training your core and improving proprioceptive skills will protect yourself from trips and falls and help maintain good posture.

A short plank exercise every day will help you develop a regular exercise habit. Building strength, increasing endurance and burning calories.

Start with a challenge?