Side planks work the abdominal muscles by lifting the obliques and contracting the abs. Learn how to do side planks to strengthen ab muscles with tips from a fitness trainer in this free core exercise video.
Carol Childers has been a physical fitness trainer for 23 years.
Side plank is exactly what it is. It's instead of doing your prone plank, which you should master first where you've got all four quadrupedic level of extension to work with, to balance with, now we're going to take the balance challenge with our wrist, elbow, shoulder all lined up. Now I would recommend starting this with your bottom leg bent so you can get your balance first. When we lift we're going to be lifting with our obliques, hence the reason why we're working our side because we're really focusing in on contracting that lateral flexion. And lift. Take a moment to make sure that you've got elbow, wrist and shoulder lined up. The closer you bring in your feet, the harder it's going to be because the more you're going to have to balance. And again, we're lifting and we're pulling up here. We don't want to let this sag down. Keep breathing, and I want you to maintain balance if you can extend the opposite arm and just look up through the fingers. If you add in rotation, and we inhale and we exhale as we contract right here, but we don't let it fall down, we keep it lifted, and inhale back up. Again, this can be done with one knee on the floor. You're still going to facilitate the same muscles, you're just controlling more of the balance challenge by extending out with both feet. Work in to about 10 reps on each side.
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