The plank exercise is one of the simplest workouts you can do. It is one of the simplest exercises you can practice in a Pilates workout. There are many benefits of planking every day, and you don’t even need any extra workout gear to practice this simple exercise. Maintaining a monthly goal to practice planks every day and staying committed to it is the best way to begin your fitness regime with plank exercise.
But what is planking? Let’s take a look.
What is Planking?
The plank is a popular Pilates workout. It is a part of many yoga routines, including hot yoga, sun salutations, and cardio-centric yoga. The plank pose, known as kumbhakasana in yoga, can be held for several seconds or even used as a connecting pose between two parts of the route.
This simple and effective core exercise helps build stability and strength. There are different ways of doing the plank, but the leading way to do the plank is as follows:
- Keep your body perpendicular to the ground.
- Your stomach should be facing towards the ground.
- You have to move only your chest up using only your hands or elbows.
While planking, you have to ensure that you keep your back straight. If your back is saggy, it may lead to back pain afterward. You also need to keep your head relaxed and straight. It also should be parallel to the floor. While getting into the plank position to exercise is easy, the challenging part comes when you have to hold the position for a few seconds, preferably minutes. Try to keep the position for as long as you can while inhaling and exhaling slowly and steadily.
There are many benefits of planking every day. Planking not only builds your core but also boosts your metabolism. It improves body posture, strengthens your back, and reduces the risk of having a back injury. Let us take a closer look at the many plan exercise benefits.|
1. Planking helps with Weight Loss
One of the biggest plank benefits is that it helps you lose weight. Planking regularly strengthens the core muscles. This ensures that you burn calories on a daily basis. Having strong core muscles is an excellent advantage as they make it possible for your body to burn extra calories even when you are at rest. All this is possible even without having to indulge in other intensive exercises like crunches.
The benefits of planking every day ensure that you have a high metabolism rate throughout the day.
2. Planking helps improve your posture
Planking regularly will help improve your posture. A good posture is important for many reasons:
- Having a good posture prevents the body from developing any type of injury caused by improper weight distribution.
- Proper posture is also a great display of self-assurance and confidence.
- Proper posture leads to better breathing. Poor posture negatively impacts the ability to breathe deeply and take in maximum oxygen into your lungs.
- It gives relief from back pain.
- It helps you look skinnier.
- It improves your mood.
- It maintains better body function as you age.
Plank benefits your posture by adjusting and aligning your body and making it appear more perpendicular to the ground. In this way, your shoulders, chest, back, neck, and abs all are in one line. This not only improves your posture but also makes them strong.
3. Planking helps with Back Pain
One of the plank benefits is for your back. This benefit of a Pilates workout is partly due to the improved posture from practicing planking regularly. Nevertheless, planking can get rid of back pain and boost the health of the back as well.
Improved posture due to planking helps align the vertebrae, removing any extra strain on the spinal cord. Planking further assists arrange the ligaments in the back, helping prevent painful back conditions. Regular planking builds and strengthens the muscles in the abdomen, giving support to your posture. Having strong abdominal muscles also makes your body feel less weight and supports you when you are standing. It helps distribute all the strain equally amongst your joints, bones, and muscles. Strong abdominal muscles will take off a lot of pressure from your back, thus helping prevent back pain.
This is especially helpful as you age since the body starts to lose some of its mobility naturally. Having strong core muscles and proper posture helps delay this natural process of aging. Plank benefits also prevent the onset of chronic pain conditions like osteoarthritis while strengthening the muscle groups of the skeletal system.
4. Planking improves your mood
When your body is physically stressed, it can be stressful to your mental wellbeing. One of the primary plank exercise benefits is that this Pilates workout is excellent for your state of mind. It can improve your mood instantly. This is because planking targets certain muscle groups in the body that are familiar sources of physical strain. This also helps get rid of worry and anxiety.
Like any other exercise, planking releases endorphins in the body, which are the body’s feel food chemicals that relieve stress.
5. Planking helps increase flexibility
Plan exercise benefits also include improvement in your flexibility levels. Planking stretches your collarbone, shoulders, shoulder blades, collarbones, neck, and many other muscles that help improve the body’s flexibility and strengthen the core. Planking expands and stretches all the posterior muscle groups. It also stretches your hamstrings, your soles, and the arches of your feet. This is why planking is a strengthening exercise that improves overall flexibility.
6. Planking makes you better coordinated
This benefit of planking every day is not because of muscle growth but from the ability of this Pilates workout to help train your muscles to become more stable. Not many people know that the body maintains balance by using its core muscles. Having a strong core helps prevent injuries that can affect the single muscle groups due to overexertion from maintaining balance during intensive workouts. For example, when skiing or snowboarding, your body relies heavily on your calf muscles for balance. Having a strong core helps take off some pressure from the calves, thus reducing the chances of injury.
Strengthening your core helps the body and muscles work together in a better way, improving your ability to work as the body no longer needs to control different muscle groups simultaneously.
Planking also helps build the endurance of all the muscle groups, thus helping you maintain balance in physically taxing situations.
Now, enough of this theoretical knowledge about planking. The next step in this process is putting all of this information into action and learn how to plank. We have the perfect person for the job.
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