The plank to push-up is a great exercise for strengthening the musculature of upper body, anterior core, and to a smaller extent, the muscles of the posterior core and glutes. The plank push-up is a perfect option if you are a beginner and need to gain the necessary levels of core stability and upper body strength before you move on to more advanced core exercises (both stability and mobility), and regular push-ups.
You do not need any equipment to do this bodyweight exercise.
The push-up plank might be too advanced for beginners. If this is the case, they can elevate their arms on a bench, and can perform the modified variation of this exercise. Beginners might perform 1-3 sets of 5-10 reps/side of the modified plank to push-up exercise. Once beginners can perform 5-10 reps/side with good form, they can move on to more advanced variations of this exercise.
Intermediate lifters who have mastered the modified plank to push-up exercise can perform the regular variation from the ground. Women of an intermediate fitness level can do the plank to push-up as part of their warm-up, can perform it between sets of upper or lower body exercises, or can put it in their conditioning circuit as a way to increase their overall core stability work. This exercise can also be used in workouts that are done in de-load weeks, or during recovery workouts.
Advanced lifters can use the plank push-up in their workout program the same ways as intermediate lifters. They can also perform a more advanced variation where they add a weight plate/chains to their mid-back and perform this exercise. This extra weight will make the exercise even more challenging. They can also mix in regular push-ups to the exercise, or can elevate their feet on a box or bench.
There are many planking benefits. How a woman chooses to use this exercise is highly dependent on her overall technical ability and experience, her reason for using the exercise, the set/rep scheme used, where it falls in the workout, what it’s paired with, and what the rest periods are. In general, plank to push-ups can be used to do any or all of the following:
Video Transcription:
This is a plank to push-up position and it’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re going to start on the plank position, you’re going to come up to a push-up position and come back down. You can go up on the same arm and down on the same arm and then switch, or you can alternate every time, doesn’t really matter. It’s whatever your preference is. So again, start on in a nice, solid plank position, keep everything nice and tight. And then you’re going to go to a push-up position, and then back down to a plank position, and then push-up position, and back down to a plank position. The key is to stay really tight the whole time, you don’t want your butt to come up in the air, you don’t want your core to sag. And you just go plank position to push-up position and back down.
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