If you’re looking for a simple way to amp up your fitness, consider adding in a few minutes of planks and push-ups to your daily routine. “Push-ups and planks are very pragmatic — you don’t need any special equipment, and you can do them almost anytime, anywhere,” says Jared Rosenberg, an exercise physiologist at Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, North Carolina. “That makes them an easy and convenient exercise to incorporate into your life,” he says.
That convenience helped motivate Jennifer Ashton, MD, the chief medical correspondent for Good Morning America and ABC News and the author of a new book, The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter — One Month at a Time, take on a month-long push-up and plank challenge. Ashton’s objective was a simple one: Do as many push-ups and planks as you can every day for 30 consecutive days. “I also wanted a challenge I could do anywhere — no gym, class, pool or bike path necessary — and that would produce results even if I did it for only minutes, not hours, per day,” Dr. Ashton says in her book.
To make your goal attainable (and one you can stick with), begin with a relatively modest (read: not your absolute all-out effort) number of push-ups and a reasonable plank time, and then try to grow from there. Ashton’s starting point was 20 push-ups and one 45-second plank.
Whether you can barely squeeze out a single push-up or you consider yourself the resident “G.I. Jane or Joe" of your gym, nearly anyone can take on this 30-day challenge and boost their fitness as a result.
Most people can safely pursue a daily routine of push-ups and planks, Rosenberg adds. “You can do them every day, but you will need to mix in some very light days,” he says. For example, if you normally do 25 push-ups, do a light day of only 5 push-ups every few days, he suggests.
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Also, if you have any injuries or a medical condition that might limit your ability to exercise, it’s always a good idea to check with your doctor before starting a new workout. For specific issues like lower back pain or carpal tunnel, check in with a fitness professional too, suggests Jessica Medlin, an ACE-certified personal trainer and fitness coordinator at the Woodfin YMCA in Asheville, North Carolina. “Most of the time, posture modifications or props can still make the exercises accessible,” she says.
Ready to drop to the ground and get started?
Push-up and Plank Form 101: Simple, Yet So Hard
First things first: You’ll want to make sure you have the right form so that you’ll get the best results without injuring yourself.
How to Do a Push-up Correctly
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) suggests following these tips when doing a push-up (according to theirACE Exercise Library):
- Start with your feet together on the ground behind you and your hands shoulder-width apart with your fingers facing forward. Make sure your shoulders are positioned directly over your hands. Your body should be in a straight line from your shoulders to your toes and nearly parallel to the floor.
- Now make sure all the right muscles are engaged: Stabilize your torso by contracting your core and abdominal muscles, squeeze your glutes, and tighten the quad muscles in your legs. Slowly lower your body toward the floor while staying as rigid and straight as a two-by-four piece of lumber. Don’t let your lower back dip or your hips rise while you’re lowering.
- Keep lowering until your chest or chin touches the floor — it’s okay for your elbows to flare out from your sides during this phase. Now press up. Think about pushing the floor away from you, keeping your core, glute, and quad muscles engaged, and maintaining that straight line from your shoulders to your heels while staying rigid. Once your arms are fully extended, you did it!
How to Do a Plank Correctly
If you can do a push-up, then you basically already know how to plank too. Push-ups and planks are very similar exercises, says Rosenberg. To do a plank properly, start as if you're about to do a push-up, with your arms extended beneath shoulders (fingers facing forward), feet together on the ground behind you, and body extended long and parallel to the ground. Engage your core, glute, and shoulder and back muscles to make sure you’re as straight as a board, and hold. Once you feel as though you can’t hold your form correctly and fatigue sets in, lower yourself gently to the ground.
Another plank option is the forearm plank. You’re in the same position, except that your elbows and forearms are resting on the ground and your hands are extended directly in front of each elbow, palms down (or grasping each other); your forearms support your body weight.
Medlin notes that it’s harder to “cheat” at this type of plank (or do it incorrectly) because you pretty much have to engage your core to keep it from falling to the floor, whereas in the version with arms extended some people have the tendency to let the upper back dip and their shoulder blades to slouch into each other.
Why Push-ups and Planks Are So Good for Your Health
Push-ups and planks are considered two of the best body-weight exercises, and for good reason. Here are some of the top benefits.
- They strengthen a variety of arm and upper-body muscles.Push-ups and planks both require arm strength to push you up from the ground and to hold your body properly. “Both exercises work the front of the arm muscles, the chest, and the triceps,” says Rosenberg.
- They’re a workout for your core and legs.“A lot of people think of push-ups as an arm exercise, but it’s really more of a full front-of-the-body exercise. In addition to the arms and chest, these moves work the core muscles and the front of the leg muscles,” says Rosenberg.
- They target back muscles too.Planks (and the plank position you cycle through in a push-up) engage some of theback muscles because you’re trying to stabilize yourself in the posture, according to Rosenberg. “You’re going to be using your back muscles around the shoulder blades as well as in the hips and glutes; when you’re doing a proper plank, you should be squeezing those muscles,” he says.
- They build stronger bones.“On a minute-per-minute basis, resistance training is by far the most effective modality of training,” says Rosenberg. And body weight training (exercises that have you using your body’s own weight as the resistance you’re doing the work against) is a highly effective type of resistance training, he says. “It improves bone health, makes you less likely to fall, and improves your ability to do everyday tasks,” he says.
- They improve posture. “When we go through life and age, our muscles get weaker and we tend to slouch over a little bit,” says Rosenberg. A lot of that is because what we call “postural” muscles are getting weaker, and we have an overall lack of strength relative to our body weight, he explains. “Push-ups help train those muscles that get weaker as we get older,” he says. Holding a plank strengthens postural muscles along the back and front of your body, too, he adds.
