Basic Core Conditioning – Mastering The Plank

Basic Core Conditioning – Mastering the Plank

Functional core conditioning is one that promotes useful application to real life situations. In the plank, if you are not orienting your stability from your Transverse Abdominis, you might be missing the point of doing this exercise in the first place. With everyone obsessed over how long they can do a plank, it’s important to note that there is a trade off for that excessively long plank. Main one being that a person will shut down eccentric and concentric range of motion to their anterior and posterior oblique sling systems. I would call this rigidness from excessive dysfunctional core activity as a “frozen core”. When your obliques, rectus abdominis and quadratus lumborum muscles compensate for a lack of stability in the transverse abdominis (caused by associative muscular deficiencies), it is likely they will all become static muscles to stabilize the body. The problem is we are asking dynamic muscles to perform a static function. BIG NO NO!!! The biomechanical results are very ugly and will lead to a deficient compensated structure that will perform in a mediocre fashion. 

In this video, I show you the basics of what you will need to effectively do a plank in a way that will improve your functional biomechanics in a 3 dimensional space. Learn to recruit your TVA in a fashion you would actually use and you will open the door to functionality!!!