Pallof Press variation

I must have missed this the first time around, but my boss introduced me to it:

Pallof Press 2.0

It's a tube based variation with movement. Give it a try; if you do it correctly it's very challenging.

Side Plank Variations

In my previous post on planks, I listed some variations for the regular plank. Here are some for the side plank.

Side Plank with Upper Leg Raised. Get into a normal side plank, then raise the upper leg to parallel with the floor. Hold it in position while you hold the plank. You can raise it higher, but parallel seems to be the hardest (perhaps because of the long lever arm being maximally acted on by gravity?)

Side Plank with Lower Leg Raised. As the normal side plank, except you remove the lower leg from the ground. Instead of stacking the top foot on the bottom foot, you place it on the ground and bend the lower leg, pulling it up towards your chest and holding it off the ground.

Straight Arm Side Plank. Instead of rest on the foot and forearm, extend the supporting arm fully, resting on the palm. Keep your shoulder extended - don't let it sag into the movement; keep it strong.

Dynamic Side Plank. Also called the Dynamic Side Bridge. Get into position as if you are about to straight into a side plank - lying on your side, arm down, feet stacked, but hips touching the ground. Now tense into a side plank, raising off the ground. As soon as you lock into the top position, relax and lower to the ground. Touch and tense into the next repetition. Note - if you have medial or lateral knee ligament problems, this motion can be a problem, so take it slow at first (and get that knee checked out!). If not, these can be done like any other unweighted ab exercise - do them for reps, and alternate sides.

Unlike the plank, there seem to be fewer variations of the side plank. You can add resistance to make it more difficult (a weighted vest is probably ideal), but the side plank is generally hard enough that the basic version and these variations should challenge you for a while.

Plank Variations

I've mentioned before how much I love doing the plank.

Here are some of the variations you can do from the "basic" plank once you've gotten a reasonable time on them. How long is reasonable? Depends who you ask. At least 60 seconds, and if you're in the 3-5 minute range, you really need to make them harder. A good goal might be a 120 second standard plank, and then moving on to harder versions.

Try working through these and see how you do. It'll add some fun to your planking and challenge your body in ways a "vanilla" plank won't once you've gotten good at them.

These are by no means listed in order of difficulty.

Pushup Planks. Like the normal plank, but you keep your arms extended. One brutal variation is to neither lock out your arms for the pushup plank nor rest on your forearms for the regular plank - instead you descend about halfway into a pushup and hold there. This will help increase your endurance at that particular part of a pushup...but usually the main goal of the plank is abdominal endurance.

Three-Point Planks. There are two versions of the three-point plank. The first is a little easier - get into plank position, then raise one of your feet off the ground. You have three contact points on the ground - one foot, and two forearms. You can alternate raised feet between rounds, or halfway through each round of the exercise.
A harder version of the three-point plank involves removing one arm rather than one foot from the floor. The arm can be held out straight or to the side (harder), or merely lifted off the ground (easier). You're left with three contact points but your torso also has to cope with uneven stress, making the exercise more demanding on your abdominal muscles. Be sure not to lose your tightness in the abdominal muscles when you do this variation, it's easy to compensate and lose the benefits of the exercise.

Two-Point Planks. Instead of raising one arm or one leg, raise the opposite one of each. Left leg up and right arm up, or right leg up and left arm up. This can be combined with holding the arm straight out or to the side for more difficulty.

Plank-to-Pushup. Demonstrated in the video by Joe DeFranco, who is also the person I learned these from. Like the plank, these are best done for time. You start in a plank, and then one arm at a time push yourself up into a pushup, then lower into a plank, and then around again. You can either change directions each round, or alternate each rep (start on the left, end on the right, start on the right, end on the left). These are harder than they look, and it's very easy to lift your hips to make it easier. That turns it from a great plank variation into a poor pushup variation. Make sure you stay in plank position!

Prone Plate Switches. Demonstrated in the video by Tony Gentilcore. Get into plank position with a small pile of (light) weight plates to one side. Grab them one by one and "switch" them to the other side. Once you've finished, move them back with the other hand.

Weighted Planks. Any variation of the above planks can be made more difficult by adding resistance. If you have a training partner, you can have them add plates to your back for any of the static planks. Generally, a weighted vest works better - the weight won't shift, and it's distributed around your body. This has upsides (you can do dynamic planks) and downsides (you're restricted to the weight of the vest, for one).

That's just a start. Planks are pretty easy to get cute with. But the basics of adding difficulty in maintaining the isometric hold, and adding a dynamic element while keeping your abdominal muscles and back tight, should be enough to hold you for now.

Pullup Variations - What you hang from

Another way to vary up your pullups is to vary what you hang from.

Gymnastic Rings are another useful pullup tool. Instead of grasping a nice round, often padded bar, you have to grasp a curved ring. The instability of the rings - they hang from stout straps and are not fixed in place - adds an additional challenge. This brings in more demands for stabilization, and makes it harder to gut out a last rep or too by squirming up one arm at a time. Rings are available online, such as these Elite Rings. The rings can also be used for other exercises, like pushups, dips, rows, and gynmastics practice.

Towels are an excellent way to work your pullup strength and your grip. Use a strong towel for this. If you go cheap and disposable, you're risking a tear and sudden fall. With a single towel, loop it over the bar, hold one side in one hand and the other side in the other hand, and pull up. Your range-of-motion is more restricted - your head will be in the way, or you'll have to duck it side to side (alternating between reps). Another alternative is to use two towels. Loop each towel over the bar, and grab both ends of each towel with one hand. Now you can pull yourself up normally (chin over the bar or chest to bar) without restricting your range of motion...but still taxing your grip and forearms.

A third alternative is to use one towel and the bar. Hold onto the bar normally - any grip is okay - and with the other hand grasp the towel. This makes for an uneven hand level; the towel hand will be lower by at least a few inches. The lower the hand on the towel, the more stress is placed on the higher arm. One way to progressively make these more difficult is to use a longer tower and grip it a little lower each workout for the same reps. Like any other uneven exercise, it's best to alternate sides between sets in order to even up the amount of work done by each side.

Towel pullups are a great way to improve your gripping strength, and the improved grip strength transfers nicely to bar pullups. One great thing about towel pullups is that you can pullup off anything strong enough to support you, even if it's too thick to grip, so long as your towel is long enough. I've done these on i-beams, square overhead beams, playground swingsets, and thick tree branches. As a bonus, you can wipe the sweat off with the towel when you finish.

Ropes can be used instead of towels. A thick rope can be hung between two overhead points and simple used as a flexible "bar." This makes for good grip training, but it is rough on the hands. Another way is to hang either a single rope or double ropes from an overhead pullup bar, and do pullups from them. Look at towel pullups and just substitute a rope.

I-beams are another often-overlooked place to do pullups. You'll need strong fingers, because you can't wrap your hands around an i-beam. You'll need to get your four fingers onto the flat portion of the beam and pull. Both chinups (supinated grip) and pullups (pronated grip) are possible. Mixed grip pullups are tricky because of the wide gap between the forward and back hands. Neutral grip pullups can be done, but you'll need to alternatively duck like on single-towel towel pullups. Be careful selecting your i-beam - it's unlikely to swap or break, but it might be dirty, greasy, rusty, or jagged-edged. Check carefully!

Bar thickness can be varied. One way to do this is with Tyler Grips over a regular bar. Another is to find a thicker, fatter surface, or wrap a bar with a towel. Lynx grips can also be used, providing a slight thickening of the bar and superior grip at the same time.

That's just a start to pullup variations based on grip and pullup station. You can get really creative. If you love pullups, you'll start finding yourself looking at everything in terms of "can I hang from that?"

Be careful when you get creative and/or desperate with pullup places. Overhead pipes in your home may be carrying hot water (giving a burn risk and a flood risk). Monkey bars on a playground are usually safe, but you'll still want to check. Same with chains on a playground swing. Swing crosspipes are great places for pullups, if your hands are sufficiently large to avoid injury from grasping such a thick pipe. Tree limbs can break, but they can also make for a great change of pace from a "real pullup bar."

Pushups

One of the basic exercises - the pushup. Aka the press-up in the King's English. It is a pretty simple exercise. You lay face-down on the floor, put your hands under your shoulders, keep your elbows tight to your sides, and push your rigid body away from the floor to arm's length, lower back down until your chest touches and come back up. It's a good test of your relative strength (strength compared to bodyweight) and a good endurance builder, too.

What happens when you get strong enough to do 20+ pushups in a row without a problem? Well, you can just doing more and more reps. But after a certain point it's not giving you much return on your effort.

Here are some ways you can make them harder.

Load them with external resistance. While you can have a partner place a 45# plate on your back, this is sub-optimal. The weight presses down on your shoulder blades as they try to move, the plate can shift (backwards or to the side is bad, forwards is potentially disasterous), and it's hard to load it by yourself. Here are some better options:

Resistance bands. Resistance tubing works as well, but it's easier to get quality bands (such as Jump Stretch or Iron Woody). Simply take a long band (41" bands work great) and loop it around your hands and over your back. Now, carefully get down on the floor into a pushup position. When you push up, the band tightens and makes the reps harder; at the bottom it gives less resistance. The longer your arms the more resistance you'll get out of any given band. Here is a band-resisted pushup.

Chains. Have a partner drape lengths of chain across your back. At the bottom, only the links on your back provide resistance. As you go up, the extra links come off the floor and the weight you're pushing goes up. Here is a nice video of someone doing chain pushups.

Weighted Vest. Strap on a weighted vest - a special vest sewn with pockets for small weights - and start pushing. You can combine these with chains or bands, and even wear multiple vests. These provide linear resistance - the weight you push is the same at the bottom as at the top.

A partner. You can have a partner sit on you. I wouldn't advise this unless you are very strong and your partner is pretty small though. Your partner can get into pushup position on your back, if that's easier. You can also have your partner stand over you and push down a little, giving you some extra resistance. But this resistance is hard to measure. That makes increasing the effort the next workout that much harder.

Change them up. You can also make the pushup harder by varying up the exercise itself. These can be combined with the loading ideas above.

Rings or Blast Straps. If you do a pushup with your hands in a pair of suspended gynmastic rings or blast straps, they become that much harder. The exercise is no longer a closed chain exercise, with your muscles pushing your body away from the floor. You now have to contend with keeping the straps lined up under you. This added demand for stabilization challenges your body to keep itself rigid in an unstable situation. This isn't the same as putting your feet up on a swiss ball or bosu ball to do pushups - that makes your feet unstable, which some research has show makes for a less-effective exercise. If you are going to make pushups unstable, it has to be around the hands and arms. Rings and blast straps do that.

Medicine Balls. You can push up off one or two medicine balls. You can use one (holding both hands on top), two (one hand per ball), or alternate one (one hand on the ball, the other on the floor). These, like the rings and blast straps, force you to stabilize yourself.

Raise your feet. You can raise your feet up on a box or bench. The higher the box, the harder the pushups, as you both increase the relative weight and increase the angle you push at. Eventually, you may incline your feet so far it becomes a mirror of an incline bench press, or even become a handstand pushup - the mirror of a standing press.

Clapping Pushups. Push up explosively, clap your hands in front of you, and then land and go down into the next rep. Very good for developing power. Try them the first time on a soft surface, like a wrestling mat. Your wrists will thank you!

Handles or Hex Dumbbells. Pushup handles (which range from inexpensive to very expensive) or hex-shaped dumbbells can be used as well. Put them parallel to each other and push up off of them. You will get a larger range-of-motion because the higher handles allow you to go much deeper. These may also be easier on your wrists if you've got delicate or sore wrists. A nice hex dumbbell pushup set.

Extra depth. You can do pushups in the shallow between two raises surfaces to get a greater range of motion.

Barbell Pushups. Place a barbell in a power rack, or in a pinch across two hex dumbbells. Get into position like a reversed bench press, and push up. Touch your chest to the bar on each rep, and keep the barbell pushed hard against the rack. This works with standard 1" thick barbells and olympic barbells, and with thicker bars (such as 2", 2.5", or 3" fat bars).

Getting creative is fun with pushups. Various options can be combined, such as chain pushups off of hex dumbbells, med ball pushups with feet raised, clapping pushups with a vest, band resisted barbell pushups, raised feet weighted vest pushups off of blast straps, etc. Each little tweak can add a lot of additional difficulty, so ease into new variations. If you just nailed 25 perfect pushups on the floor, suddenly going into raised-feet blast strap pushups with that new weighted vest you bought is going to be very hard indeed. Better to just add a little at a time - perhaps just feet up or the straps, then add again once your reach your target reps.

There have been some good articles on the pushup, here are a few:
Ross Enamait shows knuckle and fingertip pushups.
A Crossfit article on pushups, showing some additional progressions using parallel bars.