Plank Progressions with Elbows on Ball

Plank Progressions with Elbows on Ball is a full body strengthening exercise, which is suitable for all fitness levels. It focuses on strengthening your core, back and arms as well as improving your posture. During this exercise, you will place your elbows and forearms on a stability ball, which is then used to create instability and challenge your muscles. You start in the plank position and progress through a range of plank holds on the ball, such as half-plank, side-pl

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness,
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common core exercise, and we're going to take it up a notch.
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We're going to do planks, but progressions of, using this stability
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ball. I'm going to have my friend Salveena come out. Now in a previous video
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of the plank, we kind of went through plank on the floor, and the normal
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kinetic chain checkpoints, and normal progressions. A lot of those same queues
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are going to apply to this exercise as well. So, I'm going to have Salvi set up
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with her forearms parallel on the ball. See, a lot of people internally rotate, I
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don't want people holding this way. Let's work on getting a little extra shoulder
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stabilization, a little extra shoulder girdle stabilization. Going to set
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up, get comfortable, get centered, and then the rest of the kinetic chain
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checkpoints are the same. Let me have your feet a little bit further apart Salvi,
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good! So her feet are hip-width, her knees are locked out, and we make sure that
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her pelvis is in a neutral position. She's squeezing her glutes like she's
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got a dollar bill between her cheeks, she's drawn-in, head down, looking right between
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her hands. We've got a beautiful plank there. She's going to hold that for as long as
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she can maintain perfect form. I don't want to see her descend into this
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al dente noodle that I see a lot of people hold. I see a lot of people go
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into that when they do a plank. It's not how long you can hold it, it's how long you
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can hold it perfectly. So I'm gonna have Salvi take a little breather here, take a
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nice deep breath, and then we'll go ahead and progress this exercise to a single
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leg plank. So this time Salvi, let's go ahead and set you up with a one-legged
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center. Now, a lot of people, when they go into a single leg plank, will lift one
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leg up way high into the air. I don't want Salvi to do that, I just want her to
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point or toe back. She's going to make one leg really nice and long, don't squeeze -
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squeeze your cheeks, not your thighs. Squeezing your cheeks is good
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stabilization, squeezing your thighs is compensation. If she's pointing this leg,
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it's this leg doing all the work, so we really need to queue this glute to fire.
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Whatever leg is on the ground, it's that glute that's firing, that quad, and that
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calf. This leg really isn't doing anything. Good! Go ahead and relax for a
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second. You can see, just to hold a plank, with perfect form,
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10 - 15 seconds is a lot of work. I see a lot of people try to go for 60 seconds.
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Why not do three or four sets of 10 seconds perfectly, or three sets of 15
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seconds. Let's go ahead and try another progression. Now Salvi's going to
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demonstrate just a tiny bit of abduction. Those of you guys who know your side
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laying leg raise, that that glute medius isolated activation, you can add that to
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this exercise to get a little frontal plane stabilization happening. So Salvi's
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going to brace on this leg, with this leg up, and then do a little side lying leg
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raise for me here. So she will go back into extension and abduction. Now, make
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sure if she's doing extension and abduction this way, she's not coming
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towards me, losing that perfect alignment, because then we're not really
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practicing stabilization anymore. We're not increasing the strength of our core
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to keep our spine stable, we're just compensating. Good Salvi! The last
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progression we're going to show is a really, really good exercise, a
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progression, but a really good exercise to start working on those triple
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extension mechanics dynamically. What I'm going to have Salvi do is a plank, with a
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knee up. The point of that knee up is not actually the knee that's
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going up, but the leg that's driving into the floor, and then being able to switch
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back and forth without moving her torso. Good! You can slow down just a little bit.
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Make sure you're driving really well, and that glute is nice and active. Let's try to get
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a little bit more glute drive. Good! Now, as Salvi gets better at this, we can
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see we're not quite getting the glute drive that I would like to see, but
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she's getting there. As we started practicing this, this would be a great
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precursor to what we're going to do in reactive stabilization, or core reactive
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activation, where we'll actually do a mountain climber on the ball. That'll be
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our next video. I hope you guys enjoyed the progressions on this video! Thanks