How To Improve Your Plank From Start To Finish: Burpee Breakdown Part 2
Plank Progression to Get Started with Burpees
Burpee Plank Up and Down
Let's start with the basics of a burpee plank and build from there. It’s all about shoulder placement and strength.
The form of a plank is about great postural alignment from ears to ankles. Exactly how your posture would be if you were standing tall.
As always, before you start exercising you should warm your muscles up so that you’re not starting with stiff muscles that have a higher potential for injury. Warm up with: Sit to stands, calf stretches, hamstring stretches, hip flexor stretches, and high knees both fast and slow.
Don’t progress to the next step until you feel you have a mastery of the step you are on.
Wall or counter plank in front of a mirror if you can so you can assess your posture and where you need to adjust. Or set up your phone to videotape yourself and then assess and adjust until your form looks good. This one can be elbow or forearm, dealer’s choice!
Lower to a step or low table
Floor modified on knees. SHOULDER POSITION is key!! Keep your wrists under your shoulders and your arms in tight (like there's a 100$ in your armpit and someone’s gonna try and take it. If your hands are too far forward then you are just pushing yourself backwards and losing all of your structure.
Elbow Plank with hands clasped… 10 seconds and then lower to your knees. Add 10 seconds a day until you can do a 1 minutes plank
Elbow Plank neutral unclasped hands… 10 seconds and then lower to your knees. Add 10 seconds a day until you can do a 1 minutes plank
Forearm Plank…10 seconds and then lower to your forearms. Add 10 seconds a day until you can do a 1 minutes plank
Once you master the forearm plank try adding in the jump squat, from last month, with a soft landing and transitioning into a 10 second plank! Repeat 10 times
Ok, There you have it, a step by step progression to a successful plank. Don’t progress to the next step until you feel you have a mastery of the step you are on and can do 3 planks at 1 minute each with a 60 second rest between. Start with 3 sets of 10 seconds a day adding 10 seconds daily to the last plank and watch yourself progress to 1 minute in 5 days!!! Next month we’ll address the push up part of a burpee and in August we’ll put it all together!
