What will happen to your body if you do the plank every day

The plank is one of the most accessible and seemingly easy exercises in fitness. It is performed with your own weight on any flat surface and can pump almost all muscle groups, from the abs to the buttocks. But in order for the plank to lead to a noticeable result, you need to take into account a number of factors. Andrei Semesjov, wellness coach and “Championship” expert, tells us how to maximize the effectiveness of this exercise.

Plank – not for time, but for results

It sounds tempting: it’s just a matter of standing in the plank for a couple of minutes in the morning and you don’t have to bother with diets, trips to the gym and so on. But the dismissive “a couple minutes” in relation to such an exercise as the plank, can sound only from the lips of someone who has not advanced beyond a thoughtful study of the Instagram Challenges.

Those who have actually tried to stand in the bar, know for sure that it is not an easy “couple of minutes”, and solid, often agonizing 120 seconds, which crawl very slowly. Therefore, it is pointless and inefficient to work exclusively for time. It is important to start from the individual level of physical fitness and your own feelings.

What will the performance of the plank every day lead to?

And yet: what happens if you stand in the bar every day? If we mean that you systematically increase the time spent in this physiologically uncomfortable position, then it is safe to say that your endurance will improve. As time passes, you’ll be able to stand in the plank for longer than you did on the first day.

Other bonuses – for example, a slim, trim figure – remain under a big question mark and depend on many factors. It’s naive to think that you’ll be able to achieve your ideal body by doing the plank once a day for five minutes at a time. Returning after training to fast food and walking along the route of the “Three Ks” (chair at home – chair in the car – chair in the office), you are unlikely to miraculously fly into “that dress from the prom” or button up “on the abs” shedding jeans of the era of construction crews in a month.

Effective “plank-vacuum” linkage

The task to master the plank together with another wonderful exercise “vacuum” receive from me almost everyone who seeks advice on how to start getting acquainted with fitness. These are deceptively simple exercises that are not scary to start doing. Further everything depends on your determination and motivation.

There are many benefits: all muscles are loaded. You will realize this when even the flexors of your little fingers and toes start to tremble from the tension. Especially “gets” the muscles of the cortex. And over time, if you will faithfully perform a bunch of planka-vacuum every day and increase the load (even if you leave everything else as it is), you can hope for comments like: “Have you lost weight? Are you on a diet?”.

The plank in conjunction with the vacuum is also a wonderful tool for training the “willpower muscle”. Once you start doing the exercises, you will accustom yourself to overcoming loads and see how the body responds to the efforts. It’s motivating: when two weeks ago you were falling face down on the floor after 30 seconds, today you’re standing for 120 seconds. That’s a result! And it’s a result that you’ve worked for, not something that fell on you from the sky. You will appreciate it. And, most likely, you will add a couple of useful habits to the bar and vacuum. For example, walk 12 thousand steps, pay attention to the ratio of normal and unhealthy food in your diet. And then it will turn out that there is quite a cozy fitness club near the house.

Contraindications to the bar

Despite the apparent harmlessness of the plank (as well as vacuum), this exercise has contraindications. Among them:

• joint injuries;
• inflammatory processes in the body;
• spinal problems;
• high blood pressure.

Obviously, in the presence of diseases, you should first consult a doctor. However, if the state of health imposes a direct ban on the bar or any other exercise – it is not at all a cross on your aspirations to transform the body to the desired result. You can and should choose options that will be compatible with your medical history. Otherwise, if you continue to follow the planka-challenges in Instagram only from the couch, there will definitely be no change. And so, how to know, maybe in a year you yourself will record videos and post them on social networks with a call to join.