Planks!

Saw the Pilates training set-up for the day and groaned. Foam roller, upside-down bosu and a roller. I'm obviously going to be on unstable ground and need to utilize the core to balance and not face-plant or slam the knees into the floor. Today, after stretching out on the ladder barrel, she went straight to the torture. Forget about strength. She’s out to test my balance, and again, work the core because these are movements not quite done in daily actions.

The instructor is extremely creative when it comes to setting planks as the main crunch in a session. With the aid of equipment, she’s quite a terror in being even more innovative about the types of planks. Now that she knows I’m stronger, she merrily isolates the muscles to fatigue them portion by portion. It’s ridiculously effective. I don't feel very strong by the end of each pilates class. Hahahaha. I don't need a chiropractor or an osteopath anymore to iron out any kinks. The vibrations from the sheer effort holding these planks and rolling around are more than sufficient to ease out kinks.

It sounds silly when I say that holding a plank isn’t quite about arm strength. As long as I don’t let the shoulder blades sink, my entire core plus obliques are holding the plank. After 15 minutes of this, I don’t have any breath to talk to the instructor. Hahahaha. The next day, my rhomboids, obliques and lats were sooooo sore!