reckonerPlank
A plank is not a rest. It is a hold against your own spine folding, and done properly it is hard inside thirty seconds. It is the movement Reckoner reaches for when a room has nothing in it and the day still needs bracing work.
Straight line, hips level with shoulders.
- Pattern
- Core anti-extension
- Trains
- Abs
- Kit
- Bodyweight, floor
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 holds of 30 to 60 seconds
- Progression step
- 10 seconds on the hold
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Get on your elbows
Elbows directly under your shoulders, forearms flat, hands either clasped or parallel. Feet about hip width, further apart if you want it steadier.
Build the line
Lift your hips until your ears, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles make one straight line. Not a tent, not a hammock.
Turn it on
Squeeze the glutes hard, tuck the pelvis slightly under, and pull your elbows towards your toes without moving them. This is what separates a thirty second plank from a two minute one.
Breathe, and stop when the line goes
Keep breathing shallowly through the hold. The set ends the moment your hips start to drop, not thirty seconds later, and that is the number to log.
What goes wrong
Hips in the air
A raised backside turns the hold into a rest on the shoulders. It feels sustainable because it is: nothing is working.
Holding it for four minutes
If you can, the hold is too easy and the time is not buying anything. Make it harder rather than longer: squeeze more, or move to a hold with a longer lever.
Holding your breath
The point is bracing while you breathe, because that is what a squat and a carry ask for. A plank you cannot talk through has taught you nothing transferable.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 30 s | Longer hold 30 → 40 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 2 | 3 x 40 s | Longer hold 40 → 50 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 3 | 3 x 50 s | Longer hold 50 → 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 4 | 3 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, and 60 seconds is the top of what this hold was prescribed for. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. |
| 5 | 3 x 60 s | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, and 60 seconds is the top of what this hold was prescribed for. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Why does Reckoner prescribe seconds instead of reps?
Because the plank is a hold, and it progresses on the axis it is actually performed on. The engine adds seconds to the hold the same way it adds weight to a bar.
How long should I be able to hold one?
A minute in a genuinely tight position is plenty for almost everybody. Past that the hold stops being the limiting factor and a harder variation is the better answer.
What comes after the plank?
The side plank and the hollow hold are in the same swap group, and Reckoner will offer one of them when the plank stops moving.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.