The Most Effective 30 Day Plank Challenge
What is the 30 Day Plank Challenge?
This plank challenge is a simple, effective, and free workout that you do once a day for 30 Days (including occasional rest days). It challenges your core endurance and helps you build a strong core with measurable results. Core stability is a corner stone of a healthy life style and athletic performance, helping you with simple tasks such as balance during daily life or more complex activities such as squatting and other athletic endeavors. This 30 Day Plank challenge is guaranteed to improve your core strength and leave you feeling ready to go tackle daily activities. You can also pair this challenge with other fitness activities by adding a Day to Day Fitness Online Training Program!
Why a 30 Day Plank Challenge?
If you’re new to fitness or just struggle to find a purpose to why you want to work out then a 30 Day Challenge is a fantastic way to get started. It helps you build strong “S.M.A.R.T.” goals without even realizing it. It’s already time and topic based, and so paired with a few more key elements it is much easier to find and keep the motivation to continue. Since this challenge will be based on time and endurance in the plank position it will be easy to measure success and see improvement when you really stick to it. This will help you see your progress and stick with the challenge the entire 30 Days. It can be difficult to stick with something when we’re not seeing the purpose or impact to our daily lives.
How is this the most effective 30 Day Plank Challenge?
While most 30 Day Plank Challenges do give you some framework most of them fail to give you the other tools needed to really see your progress. The main measure for your core stability will be endurance and time. You could introduce some weight for the same period of time to increase core strength as well, but that isn’t what most people are looking for from their planks. While variation can be a good idea as you progress, for beginners it’s better to highlight progress to get them hooked, so rather than doing a different exercise every day of the month with no measurement we will be sure to pay attention to how long we are able to do the few exercises we are doing.
We could also just simply do a standard plank for a specific amount of time while increasing the time every day, but you will likely reach your max fairly quickly, and trying to push past your max within a couple of days can leave you feeling like you’re not able to keep up. This 30 Day Plank Challenge challenges you to become more efficient at specific dynamic exercises in the plank positions, helping you work more stabilizing muscles, keep it fun, and become easier as the week progresses.
Another benefit to this challenge in comparison to other challenges is the total amount of time spent at the point of fatigue that is beneficial to both muscle growth and muscle endurance. By using the 75% of our maximum elbow plank we are getting to the point of our plank that is challenging without pushing our bodies past the point of fatigue so that we can do more sets at an optimal stress level.
How to do a Plank?
This is easier to do with images, so here are examples of correct and incorrect form:
Correct Positioning
As you can see in the correct image, we want our back, shoulders, and butt inline. While a lot of people focus on having your body completely straight, we can have a little bit of butt rise so we can engage our lower core. We don’t want our butt to be above our shoulders so that we are putting our weight on our shoulders instead of our core muscles.
Common Mistakes
Hips Dipping
You should be trying to tilt your hips forward while tightening your core by pulling your belly button toward your spine. Don’t just suck in your belly, but engage or flex your core to accomplish this. When you do this you can really feel the difference it has on how your core fatigues during the exercise. Some other ways to think of the hip tilt is to “pull up your zipper” to pull your hips under, or to have “frog butt”. In the end if you try to contract your lower abs you should get the idea.
Butt in the Air
This is an easy thing to fall into, especially when you start to get tired. What this does is take the strain off of your core and puts it onto your shoulders while holding you up. Just force yourself to hold the proper position longer, and if your core gives then that’s all you’ve got.
Bent or Lazy Neck
This may also happen when you start to fatigue, especially in the full plank position. When you let your head drop forward though your spin naturally wants to bend also, which is going to make it harder to hold the correct position. Use the full body aspect of the position here and hold that neck up!
Breathing
It is very easy to associate holding a tight position with holding your breath. This is a mistake that many beginners make and it impacts your performance. Your body needs that oxygen to continue to perform. Just work on breathing at a pace during the plank and you’ll be all good.
Plank Challenge Expectations
Purpose
It’s important to fully understand the purpose and effects of the Plank Challenge to be sure it’s the right challenge for you. Many people think that doing planks will impact their waistline or help them move toward having six pack abs, and while they can help you move toward those things planks alone will not get you those results. Planks will stress you transverse abdominis muscles, which while they are apart of your core are deeper and are not responsible for giving us the abdominal separation look (6 or 8 Pack) which the rectus abdominis creates.
Both a smaller waist and six pack abs are going to come from healthy eating and exercise habits together. If you’d like to pair the challenge with a meal plan based on your specific body and additional exercise then you can sign up for a Day to Day Fitness Training Plan with the 30 Day Plank Challenge included. This will give you a professional meal plan, exercises, and direct access to a personal trainer with a mobile in-app experience.
Know Your Body & Health
It’s also worth noting that while there is a rest day incorporated into this challenge you should listen to your body and possibly consult with a physician before attempting it. There are all sorts of body types and situations out there, and pushing your core to the limit could have a negative impact on some individuals. Please make sure that you’re keeping your safety in mind while taking on this challenge!
Benefits of Planks
As mentioned above, while planks alone may not lead to a thinner waist or six pack abs it has tremendous benefit to health, and can also be used in conjunction with other factors to lead you to those end goals. For a more comprehensive list of plank benefits check out our article on the topic, but here is a summarized list to really drive the points home:
Full Body Exercise
While this challenge is meant to work on core stability and endurance the plank is known to put other muscle groups to the test also. Your arms will still be put to the test, and mixed with our more dynamic workouts so will other muscle groups.
Stability and Balance
The muscles worked by the plank have a lot of control over balance and stability through out the body. This has an unlimited number of benefits in day to day life. Anything from getting something heavy off of a high shelf, to shoveling dirt doing yard work, to having more control over your body if you trip on something.
Posture
Having a strong lower core allows your core to engage during daily activities, which helps tilt the hips under your body, which for most is something that is needed. When our hips our not angled properly we tend to hunch more.
Avoiding Lower Back Pain
When you sit for long periods of times the lower core muscles tend to be weak and lose the pulling battle to your lower back, causing hip tilt and eventually back pain.
Strong Building Block
The core is the foundation from which we build our entire body from. Planks help us ensure our body is fully engaged during other more complex movements and exercises, helping us avoid injury and using our body more efficiently.
Mental Strength
Planks aren’t easy! When you push yourself on this isometric exercise you will be pushed to test you mental strength. The more you practice this strength the more able you’ll be able to push through mental limitations.
The 30 Day Plank Challenge
Now that we’ve got most of the questions out of the way and helped you understand what planks and this challenge are all about let’s get into the challenge format. It isn’t super complicated, but does take a little bit of tracking, which we are all capable of. Each round of the endurance building at each max time level will be 5 Days in order to make it fit within a 30 Day window.
Day 1: Max Elbow Plank
Calculate 50% of your Max Time
Helpful Tip: Make sure you convert your time to seconds if you’re going over a minute because it can get confusing trying to divide a base 60 number on a calculator.
Method 1: Divide by 2, then multiply that number by 3 (60 / 2 = 30 seconds )
Method 2: Multiply by .50 (60 seconds x .50 = 30 seconds)
Day 2: Circuit Day
We will be taking our 50% of our Max Time and using it for all of these exercises for the next 5 Days. If your max was 60 seconds, then your 50% time for your first 5 days will be 30 seconds. It’s a little more work then just saying do a plank for 30 seconds, but it will ensure that you are giving your body the proper workout load from the start.
Warm Up - Bird Dog 3x15 Second Hold Each Side
Exercise 1 - 50% of Max Time Plank Hip Twist
Rest 30 Seconds
Exercise 2 - 50% of Max Mountain Climber Plank
Rest 30 Seconds
Exercise 3 - 50% of Max Shoulder Tap Plank
Day 3: Circuit Day
Same as the day before.
Day 4: Circuit Day
Same as the day before.
Day 5: Rest Day
Give you body some time to recuperate
Repeat this cycle 6 times to complete 30 Days
Make sure to get one last max set in after your 6th set to get your max time at the end of the month!
If you do start to get bored of the circuit, you can reference our full list of plank variations to adjust things a bit, while still sticking with the same 75% of max time limit. In the end we are just trying to improve our static elbow plank measurement.
The Exercises
Elbow Plank
We’ve already talked a bit about the elbow plank, but we will have a visual aid here just in case it’s helpful. This is a basic plank that we will be using to measure our endurance through out the plank challenge.
If you’re currently at a point where this plank is too difficult for you you can find some other plank variations that may be a bit easier for you here at our Plank Variations article.
Bird Dogs
The bird dog is going to act as a warm up for our core muscles and the groups of muscles attached to them. By holding this position for a few sets we’ll be able to get our muscles firing and ready to go for the circuit.
Plank Hip Dips
The plank hip dip is a great dynamic plank variations that allows us to work our lateral stability and puts our stability into action. You have to have your feet and hands spread apart a bit so that you do not fall over. This will give you a solid base and let you engage the muscles you need to in order to drop your hip and bring it back into a neutral position.
Mountain Climber Plank
Mountain climber planks are another dynamic plank variation involving bringing the knee up to the same side elbow, mimicking a climbing position. This movement allows you to squeeze your core a bit more in order to hold your leg in position and pull it toward the front of your body. This movement can even be done for speed in order to get some cardio work as well.
Shoulder Tap Plank
One again, we are using a dynamic exercise to make things more interesting. The shoulder tap plank allows you work on more lateral core stability. This is probably the most challenging movement of the circuit and will require a very tight core. Once again you want to be sure to keep your feet and hands wide so that you can keep you balance. You can also see that you need to shift your weight onto the static hand, but make sure you’re keeping your body square with the ground and not turning your body.
Conclusion
This 30 Day Plank Challenge is the most effective 30 Day Plank Challenge we’ve seen on the internet. It gives you all the tools you need to really improve your core endurance and strength in a smart measurable way. Start the challenge today, it’s as easy as hoping on the floor and hitting a plank for as long as you can. We are certain that you will see the improvement you are looking for.
As mentioned earlier, just doing planks alone will not get you your 6 or 8 Pack Abs, and it won’t just magically slim down your waist line. If you’d like some help in doing those things then you can use a Day to Day Fitness Meal and Fitness Plan. We can easily calculate your macros, give you a meal plan, fitness plan, and include our 30 Day Plank Challenge within our application so you have all the tools you need to get to those goals!
Enjoy the Challenge, and be sure to share your success with us on Facebook and Instagram by using #daytodayfitness !
Get Fit at Home!
If you’ve found this content useful and would like an expert to help you reach your fitness goals then you should sign up for our Online Personal Training Service. Click the image above or the link below to redeem your $20 Off of your 30 Day Training and Meal Plan! You’ll gain access to our app, our video library, a custom built training program, and a custom meal plan based on your personal preferences. Don’t wait! Get it now before time runs out.
www.daytoday.fitness/20-dollars-off-coupon
Hope
@daytoday.fitness