Deciphering mistaken thinking about Plank - The movement of practicing abdominal muscles everyone practice every day

Plank is one of the most effective abdominal exercises but many people are misunderstanding it.

Those who regularly practice gyms are no stranger to the Plank movement - one of the basic movements considered "divine" in the abdominal exercises.

Why divine? Simply because Plank is so easy to implement, the effect is extremely high. To do this, you just need to lie down, support the perpendicular elbows just below your shoulders, tip your toes, lift your body and hold your back, hips, and neck into a straight line. Keep this posture for a certain amount of time - usually 30s - 120s.

Plank is easy to implement, but the effect is extremely high.

Listening is short and easy, isn't it? But in fact, if done properly, this 30s will be extreme for beginners. People who practice a little longer will take about 1 minute, but up to 2 minutes or 3 minutes is really a nightmare for many people.

This is considered to be the best exercise for abdominal muscles , as it affects the core muscles such as the straight abdominal muscles and the horizontal rib muscles, which helps to tighten the areas around this muscle group. In addition, you can combine movements with a number of variations, helping to increase the flexibility of muscles such as the shoulder muscles, neck muscles, thigh muscles and tendons.

One of Plank's variants.

Plank is not a stamina test

Because it is so easy, many people have a very common misconception: Plank is an exercise to test the stamina of abdominal muscles, and keep Plank for as long, as effective.

Currently in the world, George Hood - an American 57-year-old Marine Marine - holds the record for Plank. He kept this movement continuously for 5 hours and 15 minutes.

However, according to research by Stuart McGill - professor of spinal biology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario (Canada) - this action has nothing to do but . set a world record. It may even "cause adverse effects on human performance" and " cause some unreasonable injuries because of unreasonable execution time" - McGill said.

Instead, you should practice short exercises, or simply perform short but consecutive planks that give different effects.

Specifically, the collective performance of people is expressed through the ability to accumulate and release energy through hands and feet. This energy can only be effective if you have a solid and stable foundation from the whole body.

In his research, McGill conducted experiments on a group of athletes. Half of them performed many light exercises consecutively, the other group chose to do heavy exercises. After 6 weeks, the light exercise group showed a greater degree of muscle tightening and tolerance.

2 minutes of practicing Plank is enough, more is not helpful.

So how long is Plank?

So in short: how long should we practice Plank? According to a famous American veteran fitness coach - Dan John, the answer is 2 minutes.

John said: "2 minutes is enough. More is not helpful . " A well-proportioned and healthy guy can keep Plank in 2 minutes easily. If you can't do it, there are 3 situations: you are too fat, or too weak, or your training is malfunctioning somewhere.