Plank Exercise: Workout from Home Series
Make Bodyweight Exercises a Staple
Squats, deadlifts, and presses are great for getting strong and building a foundation, but you need to make sure you balance them out with a steady diet of body weight training. Bodyweight exercises keep you honest because you can’t just eat your way to improved leverages to see strength gains like you could with the barbell lifts.
Here are some of our favorite bodyweight exercises for the upper body that should be a staple in any program:
- Push-up variations
- Inverted Rows
- Chin/Pull Ups
- Handstand variations
- Dips
- Plank Exercise
Remember to scale each movement appropriately and progress according to your skill level. There are plenty of variations to keep you busy for months with this list of movements.
Plank Exercise
The Plank Exercise is a great bodyweight exercise that targets the "core" muscles and involves the whole body. There are many variations of this exercise that can increase the difficulty. The variation below is a weighted, with the plate weight carefully placed on the back to increase the difficulty. At home, you can use a filled backpack if you don't have weights to place on your back. You can also check out this video: "20 Plank Exercise Variations", to learn more ways of performing this exercise.