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There are a lot of trap exercises that will help you to build a pair of massive traps. The problem is, we tend to fall in love with just shrugs and that is a big mistake on many levels. In this video, I’m going to show you 6 of the best trap exercises that you’ve never done while making sure to mix in lower trap exercises as well. No balanced set of trapezius muscles will ever be complete without paying attention to the bottom half of this important and large muscle group. It helps to first understand the anatomy of the traps. This kite shaped muscle is one of the largest in your back as it spans from the top of your lower back all the way up to the back of your head. The more commonly associated area of the muscle is this area near the top that sticks up on top of your shoulders and gets noticed whenever someone looks at you from the front. The lesser known area is the lower traps which plays an important function in shoulder balance and postural integrity. Here, we are going to cover 6 trap exercises that hit both the upper and lower portions of the traps. We start with the upper however by performing the common shrug exercise, but this time from our knees. The benefit of doing the exercise from your knees is that it removes the legs from the equation and prevents you from generating too much momentum during the more commonly performed standing barbell or dumbbell shrug. Next we stay in the kneeling position and perform the overhead trap raise. I’m demonstrating this with a cable here but you can easily do it with a resistance band as well. The key is that this move shifts the focus to the lower traps and really fires them up. The goal is to raise your arms up overhead as far as you can while keeping your arms straight. Slowly lower on the way down and repeat until your lower traps are on fire. Next we look at the twisting trap raise. Here we are taking advantage of the direction of the fibers of the upper traps. These muscles run more east to west than they do up and down. This means that if we want to contract this muscle best we want to give it an opportunity to fire in the same direction. The cable trap twist lets us do this while still allowing us to get an all important retraction of the scapula at the top of the move with resistance. The dumbbell trap row is a killer but worth the pain it delivers in helping you to build bigger traps. Here you are going to perform a dumbbell row but will be initiating from the traps on every rep. Squeeze as hard as you can and maintain that as you perform each row. This one is a definite burner but so rewarding. Finally, the two lightest exercises for your traps may be the hardest. Here you want to squeeze your lower traps to perform the prone press. You may find that you can’t use any weight here at all and that is not a problem. The key is to overload the lower traps and force them to work. The tubing reverse trap fly is yet another example of how light resistance can still hammer your traps and get them to respond to your training. If you are looking for a complete program that will not only build your traps but everything else, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and build muscular, towering traps in no time. For more videos on trap workouts and exercises for bigger traps, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

The perfect way to end any chest and shoulder workout is with an awesome chest and shoulders exercise finisher. In this video, I’m going to show you one move that you can do at the end of any chest workout, delt workout or even upper body workout to put the final nail in the coffin and get those gains coming even faster than ever. The key to this finisher is activating multiple muscle groups at once. Given the proximity of the muscles that we are targeting here and the fact that these muscle functions have a great degree of overlap, we are able to really hit the area hard with this movement. This is called a crush grip front raise. The goal of the exercise is to activate the chest, shoulders, traps, abs, forearms and even your biceps in one powerful movement. If you want to get jacked, then find a way to work this move into the end of your workout for best results. That said, I’m going to show you two different ways to do it for different results (depending on the goals of your training). I start by showing you the high rep, metabolic way to perform this. Utilizing speed reps, take a lighter dumbbell and squeeze it between the palms of your hands as hard as you can. If done properly, this will activate the muscles of the chest via the isometric adduction. Lean forward slightly and squeeze your traps at the same time. Now, begin by lifting the dumbbell out in front of you by contracting the shoulders and front delts. From here, you want to rep out as quickly as possible and resist the burn as it mounts up. See if you can complete 100 reps without resting using a dumbbell weight that is roughly half of what you would use for a standard set of front dumbbell raises for your shoulders. You can do this more as a hypertrophy finisher as well by increasing the weight that you are using. Here you want to reach for a weight that is almost twice what you would use in each hand during a standard set of front delt raises. Either way, the most important element to the success of this chest and shoulder workout exercise is that you work to activate all of the muscles mentioned and that you keep the tension high from the first rep to the last. The value of workout finishers in general is to help take your workout beyond what is comfortable to you and push you into the realm where change occurs. If you want to get jacked and build bigger pecs and shoulders you will need to push yourself further than your workouts have taken you so far. That is where finisher exercises can really come in. Challenge your body to build it up bigger and stronger than ever before. Give this chest and shoulder workout finisher a try and start building bigger muscles starting today. For a complete program that incorporates finishers into all of the workouts for more muscle gains, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the MAX SIZE program. Start training like an athlete and building serious muscle using the same workout program used by today’s top professional athletes and strength coaches. For more videos on how to build a bigger chest and shoulders as well as complete chest and shoulder workouts, be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

If you want to get a bigger back you have to use light weights. That’s right. Heavy weights alone will not be enough to build your best back since using them exclusively will definitely cost you a chance to get a full contraction on your lats, a prerequisite for optimal back development. In this video, I’m going to show you two techniques you can use in your next back workout to help you build a bigger back fast. The importance of this lies in the fact that when we train with pulling exercises we tend to never reach a full contraction. This is because the hardest part of most pull exercises like a lat pulldown, one armed row or even a barbell row, is the end. Your highest effort is needed to reach a full contraction of the muscle and hold it for a split second. If you contrast this with a pushing exercise like a dip, bench press or shoulder press, the end of the exercise provides a moment of relief. Peak tension in these exercises occurs in the middle of the rep whereas the tension tops out in the end of the back exercises mentioned. That said, you can take advantage of these point of the rep by simply learning to lighten up on the weights and leave your ego at the gym door from time to time. If you include at least a few sets of max contraction lat work with lighter weights, you will see a fast increase in the muscle growth of your back. Along with the light weights you can also incorporate one of two techniques shown here to really ensure that you are getting the most out of every rep in your back exercises. The first is using one and a half reps. The use of this rep style forces you to eliminate any momentum and contract the weights down and back, as during the lat pulldown or one armed row. Perform one full rep and then return the weight half way, only to re-contract it again and bring it back to a complete squeeze. The next thing you can do is a fiber blast. This is where you get to the end of the rep on your back exercises and perform three pulsed reps at the end range. The idea here is that even if you haven’t reached a full contraction on the first attempt, the three additional pulses will help you build and recruit more muscle fiber activation to ensure that you do. Either of these techniques will work just as well as the other, however they are both reliant on the use of lighter weights. The key to the success of the methods and ultimately the growth you will see in your back and lats is getting used to including sets with light weights in your back workout. I do realize how uncomfortable this can be to some who have been trained to think that the only way a muscle will grow is with heavy weights. That is simply not true. Muscles don’t only grow through progressive overload of tension. They can grow throw more focused tension and that comes through a better overall contraction of the muscles targeted. For instance, if you want to get better lats you need to learn how to take the lat muscle through its full function and squeeze it as hard as you can at the end of every rep. For a complete workout program that helps you to not only build a bigger back but to get a more muscular physique from head to toe, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. See how pro athletes train and how you can copy the same workouts and methods that they use to unleash the athletic body in you in the next 90 days. For more back workouts and ab workouts designed to get you stronger and ripped at the same time, be sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/jdcav24

Fat loss from the three most stubborn zones for men can be quite difficult, unless you have a plan. In this video, I share with you a three phase plan for losing fat in the abdomen, love handles or waistline area, and the chest. These spots are where most men carry their fat and are the last to lose it when dieting or trying to cut down. The reason for this is actually based on our genetics, but it doesn’t mean that we cannot do something about it. Before we get started however, here is a list of the videos that I referenced in the video for you to watch: How to Stretch Your Chest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV7l1sfEmO0 The 7 Minute Ab Workout - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jyhJ6TiUPA Lose the Love Handles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWjf2io_b6E The first thing you have to realize is that all three of these areas share the common problem in that they look bad mostly because of the abundance of body fat. You may even have developed muscles underneath, but as long as the fat is present you will never get a chance to see what it looks like. This means that your priority has to be on cleaning up your nutrition. If you refuse to eat better, no matter what else you do, you will never look better. Early on however, you don’t have to get too specific with your eating. Simply make a pass through your diet and get rid of the obvious garbage that you know is not helping your cause. Sweets, excessive alcohol, sugars, etc can all be removed and replaced with more nutritious foods. You don’t have to necessarily worry about your macros at this point but just getting rid of the junk food and liquid calories. Realizing that it will take some time to see the results of these changes however, you should start chipping away at the trouble spots in another way. For the abdomen, you want to first ensure that you can properly activate the muscles in the rectus and transverse abdominis. Most find this difficult and even when they do perform ab exercises they get frustrated at not being able to feel them. Next, you want to start adding in ab training but mostly in the form of rotational ab exercises. Instead of trying to do crunches and having the fat get in the way of the movement, you can work your abs without having to crunch. Finally, you want to incorporate moves for your entire core, such as with the 7 minute ab workout included above. When it comes to the love handles, you want to start by working the lats. Here especially, you want to focus on full contractions and range of motion to ensure proper development of the muscles that actually insert onto the top of the pelvis near your waistline. The more you can build these muscles the greater the visual differential between your waist and your shoulders and the better the v taper. Next add in direct ab work and finish up with direct oblique training for the best look as your diet gets dialed in. Finally, for the chest you want to stretch it and strengthen the muscles of the rotator cuff to posturally improve the visual appearance of your chest. From here, work the serratus anterior. This will give your chest more natural underlying support will helping to visually chisel out the area underneath. Finally, you want to make sure that as your body fat levels decrease and fat loss continues that you are working your chest in all three heads. Use the angles of the band work as an example of how to hit the upper, lower and middle chest. For a complete program that helps men to lose fat day by day in a step by step way, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an

You’ve tried everything to grow a big, ripped muscular chest but nothing seems to be working. In this video, I’m going to show you how to fix a chest that doesn’t seem to respond to your training and won’t grow no matter what you do to it. You might think that I’m going to show you some secret chest exercise that is going to do the trick. Not quite. While there will be a few new things you’ll see here the key is more in how you perform the exercises in your chest workout rather than what you are doing. It starts with the start of the exercise of course. There are two things you want to do before you even perform your first rep to ensure that the chest muscles and not the shoulders are doing the brunt of the work during the lift. Because of the proximity of these muscles to each other it is very normal for the shoulders to dominate the movement. You can stop this by first sticking your chest out and making sure it is more prominent than your shoulders. The second is that you can unshrug your shoulders by depressing your shoulder blades. Both of these things will help the chest to be in a better position to initiate the move and ultimately produce a stronger contraction. Next it is important to concentrate on how you finish each of your chest exercises if you want to get more out of them. What I’m talking about here is literally changing the way you think of a rep. Remove the word press or push from the name of the exercise and replace it with the word squeeze. This will have the effect of changing your mindset about how the movement is performed. For instance, don’t think of it as a bench press but rather a bench squeeze. Really work to squeeze and contract the chest as you move the bar up to the ceiling. Same thing can be said for a pushup as well. Don’t just push your body away from the floor, squeeze your body off of the floor. The slight difference can make a huge difference in the activation of the chest over the course of many reps and many workouts. It continues from here however since you don’t want to just squeeze the reps but you ultimately want to figure out a way to take the chest through its full contraction. The only way this can occur is if you find a way to adduct your arms across your chest in the exercise. Now, a lot of people will point to these horizontal adduction exercises for chest and say that they are isolation exercises or muscle sculptors. They claim they are not as effective for building a bigger chest. I disagree. Any chest exercise that you can load up and deliver peak tension to the muscles of the chest and take them through their full range of motion and functions is an exercise that is capable of building more muscle. Keep including these and perhaps a few of the ones that are new to you from this video and I promise you will see better chest gains because of it. Finally, you must not forget to drop set when doing your chest workouts. Perhaps here more than anywhere else it is important to do this. If you followed my directions from earlier and made the chest do the majority of the work you will see that you, at that point, could rely on the assistance of the shoulders and triceps to get you through failure and into even more of a growth producing zone. Bench presses to failure into pushups to failure are still one of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your chest. If you want a complete program that puts the science back in strength and shows you the next level training tips to take not just your chest muscle gains but every muscle to the next level, head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Us

If your arms workouts are not delivering the kind of gains that you want, it’s time to see if there are any mistakes you might be making that are holding you back. In this video, I’m going to share with you the 5 biggest arms workout lessons learned by Jesse that has allowed him to add a significant amount of muscle to his biceps and triceps in very little time. First and foremost was the amount of intensity that he has been able to increase in his workouts. You cannot stop your sets at the first sign of discomfort and expect to see significant muscle gains, despite what your new pubmed article says. Adding muscle is not easy. It never will be. Your body will attempt to thwart your efforts to add new muscle at every turn. In order to force it to get bigger you have to attack your workouts with an intensity worthy of making gains. Jesse stopped stopping his sets at the sign of the first burn and instead started pushing to and through failure. He used intensifying techniques such as drop sets, paused reps and even rest pause training as ways to keep the effort level high. The returns have been significant. With just this one change, he has seen significantly increased arm size and is now actually starting to enjoy the higher intensity training that he once hated. Next, he changed the way he lifted on his curls to include full range of motion. You have probably heard the advice many times before but have ignored it for some reason. I can tell you, it is incredibly important for seeing impressive muscle gains and may even require that you lower the weight that you are using a little bit to get a better contraction. On his standing dumbbell curls, Jesse stopped rocking his arms back and forth with his locked out elbows and instead took every rep to full extension and contraction. The results have been noticeable. Taking this concept of arm workout exercise execution even further, the change to the rocking triceps pushdown has been a difference maker in the development of his arms. Instead of pushing straight up and down as most do on the triceps pushdown exercise, Jesse has used the rocking version that I showed here on this channel before that allows him to better match the line of resistance with the force being produced by the triceps during the exercise. Once again, the change was small but the results have been huge. Again, taking a muscle through its key functions is critical to getting a full contraction. The biceps chin hold is one of the best ways to train your bicep muscle because of the position you are in during the exercise. Your elbows are not only bent but your forearms are supinated (both requirements of a peak bicep contraction). Beyond that however, your shoulders are flexed as your arms are up in front of your body. This again will create a huge contraction while at the same time eccentrically overloading the biceps and prompting even a greater hypertrophy response. Finally, the key attitude difference has made a huge impact on the speed of gains that Jesse has been making with his arms workouts. If you go into the gym looking over your shoulder and worrying about who is casting glares your way, you will likely not have a successful workout. Instead, stop thinking about that and being self conscious. Focus on what you are there to do that day and do your best to get stronger and improve your performance from the last time. The second you do, the sooner you will see gains that you never knew you were capable of. If you are looking for a complete program that helps you to avoid making training mistakes and helps you get gains faster than ever because of this,

Some people think that supplements are a savior and will help you to overcome other shortcomings in your training and nutrition. In this video, I’m going to tell you the truth and show you 5 things that supplements will not do for you and why you need to be aware of them as you incorporate them into your overall fitness regiment. The first big mistake made by many is to focus too much on the supplement and not enough on the workout. In other words, if you feel as if your work is accomplished because you remembered to take your supplements you are in for a rude awakening. How do I know this? Because I made the very some novice mistake when I first began training. I thought that as long I took my protein (Hot Stuff specifically) that I would magically grow new muscles without caring much about my workouts, my form or even how I was doing each exercise. The opposite approach should be taken. Focus on how to make your workouts more intense and how to get more out of every single second you are in the gym and the supplements as an after thought or an adjunct to that hard training. Let the supplements help translate the high intensity and effort you put into your workout into something incredible when you remain consistent with both. Next, thinking that supplements will be a substitute or help you overcome a poor nutrition plan or bad eating habits is a major mistake. Your nutrition is where your aesthetic results start and stop. If you refuse to get your eating in check and think that you will just use supplements to help you outdo any of the bad you are doing with your poor food choices, think again. In fact, I always recommend that unless you are under 30 percent body fat, I don’t believe that you should be concentrating on supplementation. Beyond that, you also don’t want to get in the habit of thinking about your supplements as meal replacements. There is no replacement for a good sound nutrition plan that fills your body with adequate macronutrients and micronutrients as well as healthy sources of fiber. Liquid protein shakes are great to supplement a meal but not as a meal replacement for one of your big meals of the day. When used as a replacement, I recommend that this occurs in place of a snack and that even then, you are including other foods as well to help round out the meal (like nuts, fruit, etc). Another big mistake is to think that supplements can negate the need for other supplements. For instance, if you are taking a protein powder it doesn’t mean that you don’t need a pre workout. Now, if your goals in your training do not require an improved performance and energy or focus in your workouts then you may not need a pre workout at all. However, in either case, simply taking one does not mean that the other is unnecessary. When done right, supplements should serve a very specific purpose in the big picture and not overlap but compliment each other. Finally, even if you have your supplement game on point and your nutrition and training are locked in, you cannot automatically consider yourself healthy. I know many a guy that thinks this way and then proceeds to drink way too much on the weekend, smoke a pack of cigarettes a day or even use recreational drugs as a form of, well, recreation! None of these things will be able to be undone simply by the fact that you take the latest protein or recovery supplement on the market! If you are looking for supplements that put the science behind their selection and has truth behind every bottle (as far as what is in them and how much), head to http://athleanrx.com and check out the ATHLEAN-Rx supplement line. See why major le

If you want to learn how to lose weight and avoid the biggest weight loss mistakes most commonly made, then you have come to the right video. In just the next few minutes, I’m going to share with you the 6 biggest weight loss mistakes that are made that are keeping you fat and preventing you from looking the way you want to, this time around. It is no secret that losing weight can be quite a struggle for many. This constant battle to drop weight and stick to a diet plan serve only to keep you frustrated and lacking confidence in your ability to stick to something. This doesn’t have to be the case. If you understand the real reasons why you are unable to stay consistent, then you will likely unlock your ability to get this right once and for all. This starts with not making yourself accountable. I like to think about this on a much deeper level than just saying you are going to do something and then not doing it. If only you are accountable to yourself without considering others, you will likely not hold this pursuit as dear as you could. Instead, think about what your not sticking to the plan could mean for those that find you to be an important part of their life. Will being unhealthy have an impact on your ability to provide for your family for as long as they are going to need you? Quite possibly so. Will failing to care about your own health set the wrong example for your kids who look up to you and everything you do? Likely so. Start realizing that others are watching and all of a sudden your own ability to value what it is you are chasing might skyrocket. Next is failing to find the eating style that fits your nutritional struggles at the moment. For example, if your main issue is that you mindlessly graze all day and eat at random times and adopt an intermittent fasting approach to fix this, you are likely setting yourself up for failure. Not because intermittent fasting is incapable of producing weight loss but rather in your specific case it is directly opposite of the mannerisms that are most embedded in your approach to eating right now. Instead, you would want to do IF if your issues revolved more on frequent large portion eating. Continuing on with diet and nutrition, what you drink is just as important as what solid foods you put in your mouth when attempting to lose weight. Failing to drink enough water early in the day is something that I’ve covered before on this channel but is no less important here. Seventy five percent of us walk around in a chronically dehydrated state. The secret to combatting dehydration is to never let yourself get there in the first place. Staying ahead starts with drinking 20-30 ounce of water first thing in the morning. Weight training must be a cornerstone of any attempt to lose weight and look good. Whether you are in clothes or out of them, what you see in the mirror is going to be your most honest and immediate feedback on how much you have been sticking to your plan of losing weight. No lean muscle gains will be had from simply walking on the treadmill or calling your workout complete after 45 minutes on a stairclimber. Better start weight training if you want to be impressed and satisfied with what you see looking back at you. Healthy fats are a great thing for a healthy diet, except when it comes to losing weight, and then they must be eaten in moderation. Due to the caloric density of fats vs carbohydrates and proteins, you simply cannot go hog wild eating these if you want to be successful in your attempt to lose weight. This is a common mistake made by people who will argue the health benefits of fats. I’m not arguing with you one bi

The pushup is one of the most classic bodyweight exercises, but also one of the most easily outgrown as you build up your strength. In order for the pushup to continue to be challenging you have to find ways to make the exercise more difficult as your experience increases and your upper body strength improves. In this video, I show you four pushup variations that are way better and more effective than the original pushups. First, it helps to understand why the pushup is limited to truly appreciate the changes that make it better. Because your perform the chest exercise with your hands planted on the ground, you are limiting your bodies ability to complete a full chest contraction. The pectoralis major requires horizontal adduction at the shoulder (bringing the arm across the chest as in a cable crossover) in order to fully contract it. The pushup does not allow for movement of the arm across the chest unless you make a change to the exercise as shown. The first way we can do that is by using the banded crossover pushup. Here, anchor a band to something sturdy to your side and hold it in one hand. As you perform the ascending portion of the pushup you want to lift your outside hand and bring it across your other and place it down on the other side of the opposite hand. The resistance of the band is going to add an overload while the action of simply lifting the hand and crossing over the body will give you the missing key element of adduction from the regular pushup. Do this on both sides to ensure proper development of the chest. The next way to do this is to perform a rotational pushup. Here, you are not necessarily lifting your hands and dragging them across your body but you are changing the relative position of your body to create adduction at the shoulder (with the same end effect on the chest). Perform this exercise by keeping your hands in closer than usual and then performing a pushup. On your way up, push through your fingers and left your body rotate to one side. The hand on the opposite side of the rotation will stay in contact with the ground as you feel the added squeeze of the relative adduction on the chest. Alternate to both sides to ensure a complete development of the chest. We don’t have to do a concentric adduction to get the benefits. You can do the physioball squeeze pushups shown as well which gives your chest a different stimulus. Here you want to place your hands on the sides of the ball and squeeze inward on the ball as hard as you can throughout the set. Now you are combining the adduction with the regular pushup in an isometric fashion and getting an incredible challenge as well. Finally, you can simply make the pushup better by adding enough elements in that it becomes an exercise that is hitting more muscles at once. We can do that with the knee drag pushup. Here the core is lit up as well by including the cross knee drag up the shin. At the same time, you are prolonging the time under tension and getting the chest to perform two reps for every one single rep of the pushup. Bottom line is, more bang for your buck and a better alternative especially when you are short on time and looking for more of a challenge. If you are looking for a complete program to keep your challenged and to keep the gains coming, be sure to head to http://athleanx.com and get the ATHLEAN-X Training System. Start training like an athlete and watch how much more quickly you see gains from workouts that are either as long or shorter than the ones you are doing now. For more videos on how to do more pushups and how to increase your pushup strength, be sure to subscribe to our channel h

Planks are one of the most commonly performed ab exercises. They are also one of the worst ab exercises you can do. In this video, I’m going to show you why planks are most often a waste of time when it comes to getting stronger abs that look good in any lighting. More importantly, I’m going to give you many different standard plank alternatives to give your abs the challenge that they need to start seeing much better results for your hard work. The key to any ab exercises effectiveness is how much it is capable of demanding effort when doing it. Simply doing a thousand reps of a crunch is not going to do nearly as much for your ab strength and development as doing much fewer reps of a more challenging series of ab movements. The issue with the plank is that we very quickly outgrow its effectiveness. In fact, I believe that if you can easily do 60 seconds of a standard on elbows plank that you should definitely be looking for a much harder version of the exercise. The best part about planks is that there are many different ways to do them. Just changing the number of points of contact with the ground for instance is a tremendous way to get a better effect from the exercise by making the core work harder to maintain your stability. That said, we do more than just change the points of contact in this video. Instead, I show you how to start by performing standing versions of this popular and overused ab exercise for a better effect. When standing, you can perform the oak tree step out plank. Place your arms into the same position as you would when doing a plank on your elbows on the ground and wrap a resistance band around your elbows and wrists. Now, step away from the anchor point to increase the resistance and try not to allow the band to bend your torso to the side. This is a great plank alternative since it introduces a new force vector into the equation (the challenge in the frontal plane) that is nonexistent with the standard version of the exercise. You can alternatively, hold some dumbbells in your hands and do a tight grapevine walk to one side and then the other. The rotation of the hips places a challenge on the core to remain stabile and prevent excessive motion at the core. The use of the weights increases the amount of force the abs and obliques will have to generate to prevent the excessive motion. This can be made even harder by placing the weights overhead and reaching your arms as high above you as you can while still doing the side walk. You can obviously make the more familiar plank (done on your elbows on the ground) more challenging as well. The first way I like to do this is by adding a resistance band to the exercise and performing a plank press out. The unilateral press here places a challenge on the torso again to make sure you don’t allow your body to tilt towards the side the band is on. Keep pressing and holding the plank and you will find you won’t be able to last nearly as long as you do when simply planking alone. You can also place your feet on a wall to dramatically increase the challenge (and effectiveness) of the plank. The jax plank is a perfect way to do this. Try to keep your feet pressed into the wall at all times to ensure that your core is working hard. Finally, the tilting barbell and twisting barbell plank variations are super challenging but very rewarding alternatives to a standard plank. You may find that you can only do these for 10 seconds at a time. That is perfectly fine. If you treat your planks as a series of timed holding reps instead of one static hold throughout, you will find that you will be able to use more diffic