rectus abdominis

This is our fourth blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at “low plank,” a whole-body exercise that particularly develops abdominal strength and trunk stability. 

Our model for the photographs is Eric Fernandez, our Gokhale Exercise teacher who teaches the Gokhale Method in the Philadelphia area.

Low plank is done on the forearms, which avoids pressure on the wrists. 

The classic version of this exercise with straight arms. Active hands and a slight bend at the elbows will likely ease strain on the wrists, but we recommend you do low plank first.

Get all the benefits of plank, avoid any risk of damage

Plank is an excellent exercise for developing the muscular strength and coordination you need to align, support, and protect your spine. While pursuing these benefits you don’t want poor form to distort your spine and risk damage to your spinal discs and nerves. The exercise guidelines that allow you to do plank safely also train your body for healthy posture in daily life.

If you are new to this exercise, or the Gokhale Method®, I recommend that you prepare your body by learning to use your inner corset. The inner corset consists of the deep muscles of the abdomen and back which support and protect the spine. This is explained in detail in my book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

To help you on your posture journey we are delighted to offer you two gifts:

• A subscription to our bi-weekly informative newsletter Positive Stance™
• A pdf of the Inner Corset chapter (ab strength) from 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

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CAUTION: If you have back pain or a diagnosis or suspicion of herniation, stenosis, osteoporosis, or other spinal deterioration, you should consult your preferred health professional before practicing plank. 

Let’s get started

Start with a baby version of low plank in which your knees remain on the floor. This creates a shorter span and requires less abdominal strength to hold you horizontal. From a kneeling position:

• Engage your inner corset—you will maintain it throughout the exercise.
• Roll your shoulders back, lengthen your neck, tuck your toes under. 
• Lower yourself into your start position, elbows on the floor directly under your shoulders and forearms forward and parallel. You can also start in a baby Cobra position and lift your trunk away from the floor. 
• Bring your trunk to horizontal. Maintain your torso, neck, and head in this straight, horizontal line. 
• Initially, aim to hold baby plank for 5-10 seconds at a time. Repeat 5-10 times.
• Breathe steadily throughout. 

Baby plank develops healthy muscular strength, endurance, and coordination.

Full low plank

When doing plank on your knees is easy and you can breathe evenly, you can progress to doing the exercise with your legs straight and your weight on your toes. 

Full low plank. You may need to drop back on the duration or repetitions initially, and then build up again. 

Common Mistakes:

Neck tension:

Keep your neck lengthened with your head parallel to the floor; do not crane to look up. Tension in the back of the neck should not be attempting to lift you up. Neither do you want to drop your head down—rather, you want the deep muscles at the front of the cervical spine (longus colli) to support your neck, along with the inner corset.

Do not tense the back of your neck and pull your head up. 

Swaying the back:

It is important to not sag in the middle. Without a strong inner corset, the abdominal contents will hang downward, which will sway your lumbar spine and compress your discs and nerves. Practice the inner corset exercises consistently and you will soon be able to maintain a horizontal position.

The lower back is dipping into a sway, with tell-tale shirt creases in the lumbar area.

Tucking the pelvis, rounding the back and shoulders:

You may find yourself tucking your pelvis, especially if you have been trained to do this when working your abdominals. You may also be working your glutes inappropriately—you want your inner corset to brace you, not clenched buttocks. Work with a more relaxed feeling in your pelvis and hips and allow your behind to remain behind you. 

Rectus abdominis is flexing the spine and tucking the pelvis. Rounding the back and shoulders are also misguided efforts to push or lift up. 

It can be tempting to push away as you take your weight in plank, rounding your shoulders. Resist this habit and allow your chest to remain closer to the ground. Drawing your shoulder blades together may help.

Make sure you are not tucking your pelvis or pushing your chest away from the ground, both of which will likely result in rounding your back.

If you would like to practice this great exercise for your back health, join Eric for a “low plank” Gokhale Exercise class on Friday, November 26 at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time). If you have not yet subscribed to the 1-2-3 Move program, sign up now for your 7-day Gokhale Exercise Free Trial.

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther or guest teachers at 9:45 a.m. 
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Moving Meditation with Roberta is Mondays at 2 p.m. and with Kathleen is Wednesdays at 12 p.m. (Pacific Time)

This is our second blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at crunches, a common abdominal exercise.

Crunches are often seen as a better targeted and safer 
abdominal exercise than sit-ups—but there is still a downside.

Crunches are done lying down on the floor, face up, knees bent with feet on the floor, and with the hands placed behind or to the side of the head. They involve using the muscles of the rectus abdominis and the obliques to repeatedly raise and lower the upper body. 

Crunches are well named—they crunch your discs and crunch your nerves. Lifting the weight of the head—which at around 11 lb. or 5 kg is the weight of an average bowling ball—can put considerable strain on your neck and threaten its delicate structures. It also encourages rounding of the back and shoulders, as you can see in the above photo. We recommend against this exercise.

Doing poorly designed exercises and overtraining the “six-pack” muscles will encourage a tucked pelvis
and a rounded upper spine. Freepik

Why are crunches so popular?

People in our culture are conditioned to feel more attractive when they have a flat stomach and an impressive six-pack, and so may turn to all manner of treatments, diet regimens, and abdominal exercises to target this area. People who have experienced an episode of debilitating back pain also want, quite understandably, to strengthen their abs and core in order to protect their back. 

Do most people need to strengthen their abs?

   
Parking the pelvis forward is a common postural habit that pushes into the groins and compresses the lower back. It indicates that the deep abdominal muscles are not engaged and prevents them from fulfilling their postural role. Freepik

Most people in our culture sit, stand, bend, and walk in ways that actually discourage their abdominal muscles from working in their day-to-day lives. Those who either arch or round their backs are holding themselves upright with their back muscles or stressing their joints. With these poor posture habits the “inner corset” (deep muscles of the abdomen and lower back) is not recruited to perform its natural role and becomes progressively weaker. 

This woman in Burkina Faso and man in Brazil use their inner corset in their everyday tasks.

Learning healthy posture as taught in our online Elements course and in-person Gokhale [Go-clay]Method Foundations Course holistically addresses this problem. In the courses we teach specific, well-chosen exercises designed to jump-start weak muscles and awaken your inner corset. Some of these are illustrated in Appendix 1 of my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Are crunches a safer exercise than sit-ups?

Crunches are often regarded as a safer and better choice of abdominal exercise than sit-ups. And they are. The Canadian Armed Forces discontinued the use of sit-ups in training and physical-fitness tests due to the large numbers of injuries caused to their personnel. The U.S. military also has a plan to phase them out by 2021. Stuart McGill, Professor of Spine Biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a leading researcher on the subject, points to numerous studies that show that repeated sit-ups, which load the discs in a particularly dangerous direction, cause bulging, sequestrated, and herniated discs as well as spinal nerve damage. 

Neither of these people doing crunches have healthy form. Their necks are doing too much, and the man is also tucking his pelvis. Crello

Gym instructors often prefer crunches over sit-ups because they are safer and result in less tension in the psoas (hip flexors). But are they safe enough? 

In our view, classic rounded crunches are still a risky, disc-compressing exercise which encourage tension in the groin, while also training the body in poor postural form (tucking the pelvis and rounding the upper back and neck).

Doing a crunch twisting the head towards the knee encourages the neck to do too much and the pelvis to tuck. Crello

Rounded crunches are sometimes done with a twist at the waist to work the abs more obliquely. This is often done by bringing up the entire upper body and reaching one elbow towards the knee of the opposite leg. 

Effective ab exercises that are healthy for your posture

There are healthy alternatives to crunches that give your abdominal muscles a good workout! 

Our healthy and posture-positive version of this exercise keeps the head supported in the hands. The arm on the side to which you are turning continues to be supported on the ground. You can watch Gokhale Method Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez performing the exercise in this video. You will see that he maintains his spinal alignment throughout the exercise, rather than tucking and rounding his torso. 

When doing this exercise:

• Support your head in your hands and relax your neck 
• Rest your upper arm on the floor as you turn towards it, lifting the opposite arm and shoulder from the floor
• Do not pull your head forward
• Do not tuck your pelvis
• Aim for small, smooth, accurate movements

If your abdominal muscles are weak or you are currently or intermittently experiencing back pain, then we recommend that you start with a less challenging exercise. To correctly identify and safely bring your abdominal obliques and other upper abdominal muscles to a healthy baseline tone, we recommend first watching this Gokhale Method rib anchor exercise video, and then learning to use your inner corset. The inner corset is explained in detail in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

As a special gift to newsletter subscribers who have confirmed their subscription, we would like to send you the Inner Corset chapter from Esther's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Please enter your email address in the field below and you will be sent an email with your Inner Corset chapter. You may receive a confirmation email to sign up to the Positive Stance newsletter first.

If you are looking for a way to exercise regularly that is healthy for your back and improves your posture, sign up for our Gokhale Exercise Free Trial:

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)

Read our Home Exercises Part 1 blog post on Cobra here.