End the five-minute arm workout with the up-down plank, a dynamic exercise that challenges your core stability, deltoids, traps, rhomboids, pecs, and muscles throughout your posterior chain. As you transition between the high plank and forearm plank, try to keep your hips stable and parallel to the floor, avoiding rotating to the side.
- Start in a high plank position on the floor: your shoulders are stacked with your wrists, your legs are fully extended with your feet hip-width apart, and your gaze is down. You should form a straight line from head to heel. Engage your core by bracing as if someone is about to punch you in the stomach. This is the starting position.
- On an inhale, lower your right elbow to the floor, then your left elbow. You're now in a forearm plank.
- On an exhale, place your right hand on the floor, then your left hand, and press back up into a high plank. That's one rep.
Continue, alternating starting sides, until 5 minutes is up.
Megan Falk is an experienced health and wellness journalist and editor whose work has been published by PS, Shape, Livestrong, Women's Health, Well+Good, mindbodygreen, Wide Open Spaces, and other outlets. She has served as an editor on Equinox's content team and at Shape, where she primarily covered exercise tips, fitness modalities, workout trends, and more.
