One easy tip for a PERFECT PLANK – useful for CORE STRENGTH and preventing BACK PAIN.
Planks are a great way to increase your core strength and endurance.
Your core muscles are all the muscles in your torso that keep your spine straight. That's especially important during exercise to avoid putting undue strain on the discs of your spine as you're moving.
What you want when you're doing exercise is for your torso to stay rigid while your arms and legs do all the moving around. Not only is it good for during exercise, as it gives you a stronger foundation and makes it easier to lift weights without injuring yourself, it also carries over into your day to day life.
A lot of personal training clients that I've had have found they've had reduced back pain, or even had their back pain eliminated entirely after spending several months building up their core strength so there's no longer that same undue stress and strain on the back.
It can be tricky to do a correct plank and get the body perfectly in a straight line. If you don't have the benefit of having a six foot mirror on your wall, the next best alternative for making sure you've got your body in a perfectly straight line, is a high-tech, sophisticated piece of fitness equipment that you probably already have lying around... a broom.
Place the broom on your back.
Have the brush on your calves, and the handle coming up between your bum cheeks onto your pelvis, and then at the top resting on your spine, in between your shoulder blades.
When you feel all three points of contact that means that your body is in a straight line and you're doing a plank correctly.
If you raise your hips up too high, you won't feel the broom between your shoulders.
If you drop your hips down too low, you won't feel the broom on the back of your hips.
When you feel all three points, that's when you're doing the plank correctly.
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