I started doing weighted plank this week as my core is rather weak.

When doing the exercise I tend to either place the plates over my shoulder blades or resting across the middle of my back leaning on my lower back, I use a tower on my lower back so the plates don't dig in. But the weight distrabution shifts tremendously depending on if its higher or lower on the body.

But after working up to rather heavy sets today I came to the conlusion that the setup I use, while it works isnt the best way to do it. During my last my lower back starting to hyperextend (not good I know- reason why I stopped), im not sure if this was to do with the plates leaning against it or if my abs/lower back arnt strong enough yet.

Would something along the lines of a plank of wood or two bars with a plate loading pole in the middle work better? as the weight would be distrobuted evenly across the body then if it was on a higher or lower part of the body.

I will be making something either thing weekend or middle of next week to try and see if it works, but just wanting some feedback from those that either do the exercise or know the biomechanics behind it (if there are, isometric exercise).

Matt wrote:Current Comp PB's

Squat - 142.5kg, belt knee wraps
Bench - 110kg, belt, wrist wraps

That's a decent amount of weight to move. What's your deadlift PB?

The reason I bring this up is that imo you're wasting your time doing planks. You work your core A LOT more squatting & deadlifting. And in fact a lot of other exercises also involve core work.

Also, if you can hold a the plank position (perfectly) for say 1.5mins (which I'm sure you can) then you definitely don't need to bother with it.

Planks are for planks... ok they're for very very weak people or those that need rehabilitating after injury or obesity.

Do some Front Squats.

What ab work would you recomend? I lift abit more then matt but still like to do abs, i tend to do:

Wood choppers
Ball crunches
Plank (must be a plank then )
Roman chair

Not all in the same session but these are the main ones.

imo if you do abs work then do some kind of movement that involves the abs contracting and shortening and thus bending the torso. Planks and similar such isometric exercises are not that useful for already strong people.

Also, trunk rotators have a low trainability. So the wood chop is a waste of time too.

All garhammer ab exercises; search google for some of them

Basically, chin on chest, toes turned in and touching each other then perform the garhammer ab variation.

But but I love the plank saying that im guessing I do quite a strong core as I managed bw+120kg for 20seconds yesterday. Still, since I started doing it my raw deadlift has gone up. Could never do 160 without a belt before.

But any way, yeah I get where your coming from.

A really good plank one to do is to use a swiss ball to balance your arms on when in the plank position.
Another variation would be to roll your arms forward and back in a similar movement to ab roll outs.

I find this burns quite a bit!