Last week we focused on your hands, but what about those shoulders? The strength you gain from pressing firmly into your hands on the floor should carry up to your shoulders.
In plank, you should be lifting up through your shoulders and pressing the space between your shoulder blades up. This will help activate muscles in your back and sides. These muscles are essential to the whole function of the shoulder joint. But often, we rely on just the muscles of the arms – the triceps and biceps. So try this experiment:
- Start first on your hands and knees. Hands under shoulders pressing firmly and knees under hips.
- Now relax your shoulders and let your chest sag towards the floor. Notice which muscles are working to hold you up.
- Now imagine there’s something smelly on the floor right underneath your face and you can’t move your hands or knees. Notice how strong you push your back up to the ceiling as far away from the floor as possible. Do you feel the difference in your shoulders and back?
- Now try this in plank – the top of a press up. You can keep the knees on the floor if easier. Pressing firmly through the hands first, now push your upper body as far away from the floor as you can – pushing the space between your shoulder blades upward. Do you feel a difference in your shoulders?
Next week we’ll look at more of the muscle areas of your body involved in plank and chattaranga (a press-up).
Muscles of the shoulders in plank pose
