Cori Lefkowith, Author at Redefining Strength Page 31 of 154

The Most Underrated Plank Exercise

by Cori Lefkowith | Jul 2, 2023 | Blog, Core, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Pain Relief

The plank is an amazing core move and a fundamental we need to include.

But holding longer only helps us build strength to a point.

And just because a move is a must-do basic, doesn’t mean we can’t have fun using other variations especially to target specific muscles of our core more.

Because the basic plank doesn’t help us work on that rotational core strength nor does it include any lateral flexion.

And learning to power and control both of these movements is key if we want not only a toned, strong core but also to improve our shoulder, hip, knee and even ankle stability.

So if you want to work those obliques and glutes even more with both a rotational and lateral flexion movement, while improve your shoulder stability try this amazing plank variation – the Plank with Oblique Knee Tuck!

In this video, I’ll show you how to perform this move and modify it to fit your current fitness level so you can build a strong core!

And I’ll share my “secret” to finding a way to modify ANY exercise to fit someone’s needs and goals.

How To Do The Plank With Oblique Knee Tuck:

This plank variation actually combines the basic front plank with the side plank as you transition from side to side with this rotational exercise.

And then it advances the basic side plank by adding in that oblique knee tuck.

Because you are stabilizing on just one arm and one leg, this move needs to be built up to slowly so that you aren’t overloading your shoulder or knee.

It is a challenging plank variation to work on your shoulder, hip and knee stability and will really work those obliques and glutes!

To do the Plank with Oblique Knee Tucks, set up in a forearm front plank from your elbows and toes.

Stack your elbows under your shoulders but outside your chest and focus on engaging your back to really lock your shoulders in place. Your hands will be in toward each other as your elbows are wider. This will feel more comfortable as you rotate.

You can even start with your arms fully perpendicular to your body under your shoulders.

Flex your quads as you drive back slightly through your heels and perform a small posterior pelvic tilt to feel your abs light up.

Maintain a nice straight line from your head to toes.

Then rotate to one side. Make sure your elbow stays stacked under your shoulder and your hips don’t drop as you twist.

As you move into that side plank, also make sure your foot that stays on the ground is flexed. This protects your knee and ankle to create better tension up your leg to engage your glute.

Squeeze your butt forward as you lift your top leg up and reach your top hand overhead.

Then tuck your elbow and knee together. You will crunch them together slightly in front of you, but do not allow your bottom hip to sag.

You want that bottom oblique and glute working!

After performing the tuck and reaching back out move back to face the ground and rotate into a side plank on the other side to perform the oblique knee tuck.

Do not rush this move. Take it slow to really stabilize and feel those obliques and glutes working!

So How Can You Modify This Move?

Adding movement to a plank exercise creates a new stability challenge. And side planks themselves are already very challenging.

You do not want ego to get in the way. So just because you can do a full plank from the ground, doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily earned this variation.

The rotation into the side plank and then supporting yourself with only your bottom leg as you tuck the top leg, requires more strength and stability than we realize.

If you find yourself losing balance or rushing, try first modifying with your elbow up on a bench, stair or incline.

By lifting up your elbow, you reduce the resistance on your upper body and put less strength demands on your entire core.

I prefer the incline to modify because it allows you to learn to engage everything down to your feet.

When you do a knee plank variation, you don’t learn how to create tension into your lower leg.

As you build up and get comfortable with the movement pattern, you can move back to the ground.

We have to remember it isn’t just strength sometimes but that mind-body connection we first need to work on with movements. We need to build that smooth coordination and get muscles engaged efficiently and correctly to progress.

So slow things down and use that incline.

However, if you find that you can do the full plank off the ground but that you lose balance as you alternate sides, you can even modify by doing one side at a time.

Just rotate from that front plank to the same time to help you maintain that balance. Then after all reps are complete, switch to the side plank on the other side.

Now what if due to injury, an incline variation still isn’t right for you?

Because I know that not every move is right for every person, I wanted to share some tips to help you learn how to adjust any moves you ever need…

So my secret to modifying moves?

Not being married to an exercise and instead always prioritizing the muscles I need to train and movement patterns I want to work on.

With this plank with oblique knee tuck, I always want to first see how I can simply regress the exact movement.

But when this isn’t possible, I go back to why the move was being used in the first place.

Was it that I wanted rotational core work? That extra oblique and glute medius work? That lateral flexion?

When you have a goal for every move you include, you can easily swap in another move or moves that achieve those same goals whenever you need.

If you did still want a balance and stability component while working on that lateral crunch, but that didn’t require strain on the shoulders, maybe you include a standing oblique knee tuck where you stay balanced on one side.

Or maybe you wanted more of the rotational element to target your obliques and glutes unilaterally but can’t get down on the ground so you include a cable hip rotation.

The point is, when modifying, you aren’t as much concerned with the exact exercise as the GOAL for the movement.

And whenever possible, you keep the exercise as close as possible to train that exact movement, build the mind-body connection and build up.

But when that isn’t possible, you simply stay focused on the goal for including the move so you can see the same benefits!

There is always a way to find a movement variation to match our needs and goals.

That’s why I love this amazing plank with oblique knee tuck when you want to work your glutes and obliques even more.

And the rotational movement and lateral flexion are a great way to target your core in multiple planes of motion.

But if you can’t get down on the ground to enjoy this amazing plank move, give these non-floor core moves a try.

–> Non Floor Core Moves

FHP 525 – Why You’re Not Losing Fat (The #1 Reason)

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 27, 2023 | podcast

Struggling with weight loss? Fear and misinformation about protein might be holding you back. Join me and my fabulous dietitian, Michelle, as we bust common protein myths and uncover the truth behind the significance of this essential macronutrient in achieving your health goals.

We examine the impact of our food choices and discuss how carb-heavy diets and busy lifestyles can contribute to poor nutrition. Michelle shares valuable insights on the importance of consuming protein-rich foods and their role in building and repairing tissues. We also tackle age-related adjustments to nutrition, offering tips on how to modify your diet and embrace new training approaches to accommodate evolving bodies.

Don’t let fear keep you from success! Tune in as we share strategies for maximizing workout efficiency, building a strong mind-body connection, and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Say goodbye to mental barriers and embrace change for a healthier, happier you!

Can’t Build Muscle? Try These 5 Strength Training Techniques

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 25, 2023 | Blog, Exercises, Functional Fitness

So often we focus on progression only through adding loads or doing another rep with a weight.

But at some point, you can’t just keep adding 5lbs every week.

You can’t do another rep.

That’s why creating progression through the same but different is so key.

You don’t need a crazy fancy new device or some new secret exercise.

You can make small tweaks to the moves you’re doing to see those strength and muscle improvements.

So stop getting caught up in only lifting more.

Here are 5 training techniques to help you create that progression through the same but different and see those better muscle gains!

The first way to use the same moves you love and create a new stimulus for growth is to…

Mix Up Equipment

Barbells vs. dumbbells vs. cables vs. bands can all be used to apply tension and create instability and resistance in different ways.

They often even require you to use a different loading placement which can help you change which muscles get more emphasis during a move.

While dumbbells are a great way to load down a step up and challenge your legs, you can emphasize your glutes more during this move by using cables instead.

The cable being anchored down low and the consistent tension as you drive up and then control the lower back down, can help you really feel those glutes more than even your quads.

It can help you keep progressing that step up if you feel yourself starting to cheat with the dumbbells while allowing you to shift how you use the move in your progression because of the shift in muscle emphasis.

You may even find you combine two types of resistances to get the different benefits each provide when you feel you aren’t able to just add more weight.

If you find you can’t really keep progressing loads with a dumbbell chest fly, try lowering the dumbbell weight you’re using while adding in a band for the movement.

The band applies resistance in a new way and even applies more resistance throughout the arc of the movement while forcing you to really control the fly open.

Just by adding in the band, you may be surprised how much lighter your dumbbell weights have to get, allowing you new room for progression.

Not to mention you can even increase the band tension over time as well.

The second tweak you can make to the exercises you’re already including to create progression is to Adjust Your Posture.

Good form isn’t a simply good or bad as we often act like it is.

There are slight changes in our form we can make to emphasize muscles involved in the movement to different extents while also even hitting different aspects of the same muscle.

You could take the same walking lungeand make it more glute intensive by adding in a more vertical shin angle and slightly angled out wide stride or more quad intensive by keeping it more narrow and allowing your knee to travel further forward over the ball of your foot.

Just like you can change your hand placement on push ups to make them more tricep intensive while requiring less scapular control with a narrow grip or slightly less tricep intensive while requiring more scapular control with a standard grip.

Even super small adjustments like slightly different degrees of hip flexion during seated abduction can help you better establish that mind-body connection and engage different aspects of the glute medius.

So often it isn’t even that we need a crazy new move to work an area, we just need to adjust our form slightly to change how it is working!

The third technique is one most of us often avoid because it can really force us to lighten loads and it can be a bit frustrating since it can make moves awkward…

It’s To Change Our Base Of Support.

If you’ve maxed out on a bilateral or two-limbed move, make it a unilateral or one-sided move.

This can create instability, challenge your core more and requires you to even change how you recruit muscles to improve your mind-body connection.

It can also help you address weak links or a weaker side, which may then allow you to lift more when you thought you’d hit your cap with the bilateral variation.

And even when you’re doing a unilateral variation, you can easily mix things up, because many unilateral moves are more challenging than we give them credit for even with lighter loads.

With something like the single leg deadlift, you may find that starting out you don’t have the balance to do the fully unilateral variation. Or you don’t like how much you really have to drop down in weight.

So instead, maybe you try an 80/20 option, or a bench supported option.

This can help you target each side independently while still going a bit heavier than you may be able to with the fully single leg variation.

And changing your base of support doesn’t always have to mean just creating instability or a new challenge for the exact muscle you want to target.

It doesn’t even always mean making that base of support one sided…

It can even be something as simple as doing a chest supported row over a bent over row so that you can’t bounce the weights or use any momentum.

This can be key if you are finding yourself starting to cheat as you’re getting up in weights to try to eek out more.

Sometimes we want to limit what other muscles can be used to get up more weight to help us better hone in on the areas worked.

This can force us often to even go down in loads to start.

With the chest supported row, you may find that having your core locked into the bench allows you to even better focus on that scapular movement!

The 4th way to create progression and even improve your mobility and flexibility in the process is to…Adjust The Range Of Motion

The best way to make sure your flexibility and mobility work sticks is to then strengthen in your workouts through that full range of motion you’ve worked hard to build.

It’s why progressing from a split squat to a deficit split squat may help you improve your hip range of motion while also giving you a new challenge.

That bigger range of motion will make the move more challenging and create extra stretch on muscles under load to help you drive muscle growth.

However, changing the range of motion to drive muscle growth or hypertrophy doesn’t always mean increasing it.

Because metabolic stress is another driver of muscle growth, shrinking the range of motion at times to keep a muscle under tension can also be helpful.

So instead of just doing dumbbell bicep curls, you can combine that move with a resistance band top only curl where you never release tension and only go halfway down in the movement.

This will create fatigue and push you to failure in a new way and help you get more out of your original basic curl without having to progress the weights past the point you’re able to!

With this curl option you’re also using a new tool to help drive growth as well!

Another way to adjust the range of motion to create a new challenge is to actually change the direction or plane of motion you are moving in.

If you’ve been including a single arm suspension trainer row, you may try a rotational row instead.

This changes the range of motion and plane of motion you are working in to not only target the same muscles in different ways but even get new muscles involved to make sure you’re building functional strength in every direction.

The 5th and final technique that can help you drive that muscle growth even using the same moves and weights you are currently is to….

Emphasize the Eccentric.

Small tweaks to what we are currently doing can really add up! Too often we make massive changes over seeing the 1% opportunities.

And emphasizing the eccentric portion of an exercise is a great way to even use your current workouts while pushing growth.

To emphasize the eccentric, you’re going to focus on the portion of the move that is stretching the prime mover or main muscle driving the exercise.

With a pull up, you will want to focus on slowing down the lower down from the bar.

On the squat, you want to slow down the lower down to the bottom of the squat.

This focus on slowing down the stretch of the muscle to spend more time under tension has been shown to be a great way to drive muscle growth.

And it can be used with so many moves.

Just realize you may find that this can make you VERY sore, especially starting out.

Focusing on the eccentric can also help you tackle movements or weights you can’t yet fully use, especially if you change the move to eccentric only with a reset at the start.

With the push up, if you’re including those to build muscle, but can only currently do them off an incline, you may find you can do an eccentric only version from your toes off the ground.

We are often stronger in that eccentric portion of the move.

And that progression to that full version, plus the time under tension, could help you progress a move you are stuck on to build muscle!

We have to remember there are so many ways to create progression that aren’t just about adding more weight or doing another rep.

And the more advanced we are, the more we need to see opportunity in creating progression through the same but different.

So even using your current workout progression, see how you can use these techniques to make small tweaks and see those muscle gains improve!

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FHP 524 – The No BS Approach To Getting Lean and Strong

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 20, 2023 | podcast

Achieving your goals is NEVER easy.

Simple and sustainable don’t mean easy.

Success is hard.

Really selling you on wanting to make a change right now…right!?

As weird as it sounds, I think the best results happened when we are prepared to work hard.

That’s why in the episode I want to talk about how to better help yourself embrace the hard as well as what you can do to see results faster.

And one of my amazing trainers Kristina is going to talk about how she helps clients shift their mindsets and prepare for the hard work ahead, and even her personal journey to really become the hardest worker in the room at all times!

🎧 Thanks for tuning in to the Fitness Hacks Podcast! 🎙️

If you’re enjoying the podcast and found it valuable reviews are super helpful to help this reach more people🙏.

Can’t Do Push Ups? Try These 5 Tips

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 18, 2023 | Blog, Bodyweight, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Push Ups

You’ve been working at them and working at them…

But you just don’t feel like your push ups are progressing no matter how hard you try.

Yet you feel like you’re soooo close!

That’s why I wanted to share these 5 tips to help you adjust your workouts and push up work to finally get over that hurdle and bust out picture perfect push ups from your toes.

Because we don’t just want to do one beautiful push up…we want to look like a push up rockstar!

First, don’t just include push ups for only reps and sets – use intervals instead to work on your push ups!

A big part of improving our push ups is our mind-body connection, not just our overall muscular strength.

Often we are strong enough already, we just aren’t able to fully recruit the correct muscles in the correct order to work together as efficiently as we need.

It’s why our hips sag as we focus on pushing back up or our elbows flare or we can’t engage our back to support our shoulders.

That’s why interval work over counting reps can help.

Intervals allow us to focus on what we feel working during each and every rep.

Because we don’t have to care how many we do.

We are just working for that set amount of time. We also don’t get to be “done” any faster by rushing through the reps.

So having that set time frame to work allows us to focus on each rep.

AND it allows us often to do a higher volume of work with a harder variation over getting focused on doing more reps while using a more modified variation.

Often when we see 3 rounds of 8-12 reps listed, we modify the push up to do more reps each round.

But this often only helps us improve our strength endurance to do more reps of that modified variation.

Using intervals, if you know you have 1 minute to work, you can do a rep of the hardest variation, pause. Reset and do another rep of that same challenging variation. Pause again and repeat. You can then modify if you can’t keep the rest about 10-15 seconds between reps.

This allows you to create a great training volume while using that harder variation to build up!

And you can stay focused on what you feel working over just trying to get a certain amount of reps done!

Next, don’t be afraid to mix up the push up variations you use! Push ups can be their own best accessory exercise!

Often if we can’t yet do a full push up, we don’t consider mixing things up.

But different grips and push up variations can help us target our weak links and strengthen them while also allowing us to get in more push up work.

So instead of just using the standard push up multiple times over the course of the week, vary up the types of push ups you include.

Try close grip to work those triceps more while requiring less scapular control.

Try shoulder tap push ups to work on that anti-rotational core strength and shoulder stability.

Mix up the variations you use, modifying them even to target those weak links while still working on your mind-body connection overall for push ups.

And don’t be afraid to also change up tempos and ways of modifying. If you always use an incline, try a band assisted push up instead!

Which brings me to tip #3….Try doing push ups but ONLY the lower down.

Often using even just one single aspect of a movement can help us strengthen it.

And when it comes to our push ups, we can see great gains by just focusing on the eccentric portion of the movement, or the lower down, because we are actually stronger during that part.

This means we may be able to slow down the tempo and spend more time under tension while doing a more advanced push up variation than we would be able to if we had to press back up.

So if you’re feeling stuck on an incline or modified variation, try going to that next advanced step up and do only the lower down, focusing on a slow 5-6 count.

Once you lower all the way down, simply reset at the top, don’t try to push back up.

Complete even just 3-5 reps this way or even an interval of work.

But focus on what you feel working and everything engaging correctly as you just control the lower down of the most advanced version you can!

And then even include PAUSES in your push ups, especially in this variation.

While you can pause at points in any push up variation you include to work on those points you tend to get stuck, it can be extra beneficial to include pauses during the eccentric only push ups at the very bottom.

Hold in that perfect plank an inch or so off the ground. Focus on engaging everything as hard as possible and even run through a checklist of what you feel working in your head.

Hold here for a 3-5 count then relax down and reset.

This ability to hold tension at the bottom of your push up will ultimately help you maintain tension to do the full press back up.

Often when we hit the bottom of the movement, we struggle to shift from lowering down to pushing the ground away to press back up.

This ability to maintain that plank position at the bottom is key.

It’s honestly often the missing component in our mind-body connection and where we lose tension, holding us back from full range of motion perfect push ups!

So try using that pause at the bottom. Although you can also implement pauses throughout the movement if you find there are other points you tend to fail.

Like if you get stuck when your elbows are bent to 90 degrees, try holding there too!

But don’t be afraid to included these pauses to create more time under tension and even give yourself the mental ability to focus on what you feel working without having the movement factor in!

Then stop just trying to do more reps in a row.

Often to build strength, we do want to do one more rep with a weight.

One more rep of that challenging movement to create progression and build strength and muscle.

But when working to progress a SKILL, simply doing more volume of a more modified variation can keep us stuck.

Instead we want to focus on fewer reps in a row of a harder variation.

We can build up volume by resting even 15-20 seconds between 1-3 reps to get the 8-12 reps we want to complete.

But we can’t just shoot to keep trying to do 10 reps in a row.

Or we will end up continuing to need to use the modified variation and only continue to get stronger with the modification.

Often when we get focused on hitting a higher rep range for a move too, we rush through the rest. This doesn’t allow us to fully recovery and requires us often to modify even more over the rounds.

Instead, rest more and do fewer reps in a row!

Seek to use a variation you can only do a single rep of. If you can even do 2-3 reps, try something harder!

If you’ve been stuck, feeling like you’re just at that tipping point to be able to do a full push up, try implementing these 5 tips in your workout progression.

Use intervals over counting reps.

Use different push up variations.

Focus only on the lower down and even include pauses.

And then don’t be afraid to do single reps in a row, building up that volume over the interval of work!

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