The basic exercise such as planks and its variations are most popular that help weight loss and flatten your stomach. Besides, 30 day plank challenge are excellent for strengthening your weak parts such as abdominal, lower back and upper body muscles.
Doing plank workout regular, even daily are completely safe, which can help achieve the flat and toned stomach, ease muscle pain especially your back, maintain muscle mass and lowers the muscle and bone injuries.
Here you will know the following important facts about plank workout or plank challenge:
- How to do planks to flatten stomach
- The benefits of plank workout
- What are the different plank variations
- How to do 30 days plank challenge
1. How to do Planks to Flatten Stomach
Make sure, to maintain the proper form you should hold it short duration, than to stay in an improper position for a long period of time. Gradually increase your time, when you feel no longer challenging with short duration.
Follow these steps:
- Go to push-up position and extend your legs behind.
- Bend your elbows and rest your weight on your forearms.
- Your body should form a straight line from shoulders to toes.
- During plank, contract your core, buttocks and tighten your stomach.
- Hold this position for 20 to 60 seconds depending on your level.
- Rest for few seconds and repeat this four to six times.
2. Benefits of 30 days Plank Workout Challenge
Strengthen your Core and help Flatten Stomach
Forget about crunches as they're not that effective at getting a flat, toned stomach. Nowadays, sit-ups are considered as old exercise and not that much effective which causes lower back injuries.
Doing plank daily, means that your core muscles will become stronger and tighter. Besides, it also tone other muscles, such as arms, shoulders and chest.
Burn more Calories
Although few minutes of plank won't burn as much fat as cardio exercise. But it build strength in your midsection, and increases the metabolism which is an effective way to get rid of fat around stomach.
For every kilo of muscle you gain, your body burns about 50 calories per day. So, if you gain 5-6 kilos of muscle, you can burn up to 500 more calories per day.
Better Muscle Definition
Once you start this 30 days plank challenge you will get much better muscle definition. You can try different plank variations to challenge yourself, or by increasing the length or possibly you can also use weights, so, you will never get bored with planks.
Prevent Back Pain
Plank workout are the most effective and simple way to prevent lower back pain. Your core muscles play important role such as stabilizing and protecting the back, which involves everyday movements.
Thus, the plank improve core strength which help reduce the back pain. However, a complete exercise program (cardio, exercises and rest) is more effective in reducing pain.
3. 5-Minute Daily Plank Workout for 30 Days
Different Plank variations
The most common are basic plank where you have to hold your body as long as you can. But, you can also target almost every muscles of your upper body with different plank variations, which gives a great whole body workout.
Before trying these, you should practice basic plank for first few days.
1. Straight Arm to Elbow Plank
- Start with push up position and keep your arms completely straight, and legs behind.
- Keep your body straight and slowly bend your elbows one by one.
- Hold this position for 3 seconds.
- Go back to straight arm plank and hold this 3 seconds and repeat as long as you can.
2. Decline Plank
- You will need a bosu ball or use a box to support your legs.
- Go to forearm plank position and place your feet over ball or box.
- Engage your core and squeeze your butt to form a straight line.
- Hold this position as long as possible.
3. Plank Saw
- Start with forearm plank, elbows under the shoulders and your legs behind.
- Keep your core and back straight.
- Engage your core and move your body forward with the help of elbows, return back to starting position, and repeat.
4. Elbow plank leg lifts
- Begin with elbow plank position and hold this for 10 seconds.
- Then, while squeezing the abdominal and glutes, raise one leg off the ground and hold 5 seconds.
- And repeat with other leg.
5. Reverse plank leg lifts
- Lie on your back and rest your elbows to the ground, with palms facing downward.
- Raise your upper body and core, while yours elbows on ground.
- Keep your core tight and neck straight.
- Raise your legs slowly and hold for 2 seconds and repeat with other leg.
6. Elbow plank pike jacks
- Go to the elbow plank position with arms shoulder width apart.
- Slightly spread your legs, while keeping your core and shoulder straight.
- Raise up your hips and return to starting position.
- Repeat as much as you can.
7. Plank with forward arm reach
- Start with forearm plank position.
- Spread your legs for better balance.
- While holding this position raise your one arm forward direction and hold for one second.
- Repeat with other arm.
8. One arm and one leg plank
- Here, instead of raising one leg, you will also raise the arm opposite that leg.
- Hold this position for few seconds.
9. Side plank
4. How to do 30 Days Plank Challenge
You can do this 30 days plank challenge to improve your overall upper body strength which also offers following benefits:
- Strengthens the abdominal muscles
- Reduction in belly fat
- You will sleep better and help to maintain muscle mass.
If you are a beginner; start the first day by holding the 10-20 second six to eight times, then increase your duration gradually until you reach the 300-second in one hold, at 30th day. Aim for 5 minutes per day with different variations.
To get more benefits while doing plank challenge, it is important to try all variations that explained above. However it will work much better when you combine this 30 day challenge with 10 minutes of skipping rope.
Safety Tips for Plank Challenge
You have to keep few things on mind before begin plank challenge. Make sure that your feet should be positioned not too close or too wide, Keep your face and eyes towards the ground, it will reduce the neck stress. The back should be straight, parallel to the ground.
Maintain the position by contracting the abdominals and buttocks. Don't raise the buttocks too high and too low else your back will hurt, your body must be straight from head to toes.
What if you're a beginner?
You can reduce the plank difficulty. From the starting position, you can use your knees instead of toes, which makes the exercise easier. However, if your spread your legs and arms wider it will increase difficulty.
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