Health & Fitness
Blog Post: How to Increase Your Upper Body Strength With Your Plank Exercise
Work your upper body strength, core strength, agility and stability with this amazing exercise. Learn how a circuit will get the results you have been looking for.
This week we are really going to hit it hard by working on what we call a traveling plank. Traveling planks will help you build your upper body strength as well as your abdominal muscles and legs. If you haven't been following our plank series, please take a look at "" for proper form and posture of your starting position of the plank. We also talked about how to make your and how to turn your so you can really make your workouts diverse. Please follow along with the series to help you build up to the traveling plank.
Traveling planks will help you build your upper body strength by pushing yourself from your forearms up to your hands. You will be working all the muscles from your , but now you will be working it harder and challenging your stability and agility even more.
To start your traveling plank, you will start in your . In a controlled manner with your right arm, come down to your forearm, then bring your left arm down to your forearm. Now you will be in a prone Iso-Ab position on your forearms. From here you will push yourself back up with your right hand, make sure you place your right hand just under your right shoulder and push yourself back up to your hands, now you are back into your starting .
Perform this exercise on your right arm for 30 seconds or 12 repetitions. Take a 30 second break and do it again with your left arm. Work on doing this two times on each side. Once you get stronger with this exercise, you can start working in the other variations of the plank giving yourself a great workout.
Here is a good example of a good circuit incorporating all exercises:
1. Hold your for 30 seconds, stand up and do 20 jumping jacks.
2. Come back to the floor and do your for 30 seconds, stand up and do 20 jumping jacks.
3. Come back to the floor and do your for 30 seconds, stand up and do 20 jumping jacks.
4. Come back to the floor and do your traveling plank for 30 seconds, stand up and do 20 jumping jacks.
Work up to doing this whole circuit with no rest and you will have a great full body workout that adds in your cardiovascular workout as well. This type of workout is more fun and interesting than your boring cardio machines, and you will benefit greatly from these exercises.
Come on into ferrum fitness and we can give you even more variations and show you how to make your circuits fun and interesting to keep you motivated with your workouts. Working out doesn't have to be boring, and in a short amount of time you can reach your fitness goals!
Jessica Unbewust
co-owner
ferrum fitness
