7 Fitness Trainer-Approved Plank Variations for Pickleball Players on the Go You’ll Wish You’d Known About Sooner

It is the elephant in the room that everyone talks about, but very few people take it seriously. We all know how important core strength is – better balance, less back pain, blah, blah. But how many of us take the time to give our core the love it sorely needs? A couple of crunches here and there, maybe some leg raises twice a month at the gym. That’s where I was at, and it never really hurt my pickleball game until I started experiencing the dreaded lumbar pain.

My plank journey began on a nondescript hotel room floor, motivated by a mixture of nerves and a desire for a sturdier core. What started as a simple exercise quickly became a game-changer for me.

Planks are a cornerstone for core conditioning. They don’t just bolster your midsection; they enhance your stability and endurance—critical elements for mastering rapid movements and powerful shots in pickleball.

I progressed from barely holding a basic plank to mastering advanced variations that tested every inch of my core. I’m excited to share these seven fitness trainer-approved plank variations with you. Each one is specially chosen to strengthen your core and boost your performance, ensuring you’re always game-ready, no matter where you are. Let’s build that core strength that every pickleball player needs!

1. Position Your Forearms: Begin by lying face down on the floor. Place your forearms flat on the mat, ensuring they are directly under your shoulders. Spread your fingers wide for better stability.
2. Elevate Your Torso: Press firmly into your forearms and elbows to lift your torso off the floor. Engage your core muscles tightly while keeping your neck and spine in a neutral position, aligning your head with your spine.
3. Prepare Your Legs: Tuck your toes under and straighten your legs. Gradually lift your knees off the mat, making sure your body forms a straight line from your head to your heels.
4. Hold the Position: Initially, maintain this position for 20–30 seconds. As you gain strength, aim to increase the duration to 1 minute or longer, ensuring you keep your hips stable and aligned.
5. Increase the Challenge: Once you are comfortable holding the forearm plank, increase the duration. The world record might be over 9 hours, but adding even a few seconds more can be a significant achievement!

1. Start in a Seated Position: Sit tall on the floor with your legs extended straight in front of you. Place your hands behind your body, palms down on the floor, with your fingertips pointing towards your feet.
2. Lift Into the Plank: Engage your glutes, core, and arms to lift your hips off the floor. Aim to form a straight line from your heels to your shoulders. Make sure your shoulders are pulled down away from your ears, and avoid dipping your hips by slightly tucking your pelvis.
3. Maintain the Position: Hold the reverse plank for 20–30 seconds, or as long as you can maintain good form. Focus on keeping your body straight and stable throughout the duration.
4. Add a Challenge (Optional): Try adding a leg raise for an added challenge. While holding your reverse plank, bend at the hip and lift your right leg toward the ceiling. Keep your hips stable and your upper body strong while lifting. Slowly lower your leg back down with control and repeat with the other leg.
5. Modify If Needed: If the standard reverse plank is too challenging, you can make it easier by placing your hands on an elevated surface like a step or bench. This adjustment helps reduce the strain on your lower back and makes maintaining the plank position more manageable.

Benefits for Pickleball Players: The reverse plank is an excellent exercise for enhancing the strength and stability of muscles critical for pickleball. Strengthening your glutes, hamstrings, abs, obliques, triceps, and shoulders improves your ability to maintain balance, execute powerful shots, and move swiftly across the court. This exercise helps develop a strong, stable core and upper body, essential for driving the ball effectively and protecting against injuries during intense play.

While the reverse plank provides all the strength benefits, I like it the most because of the stretching it lends to the pecs and anterior shoulder muscles. I’m a software engineer by day, and even though I do my darndest to sit with good posture, there’s no fighting that sitting for long periods, starting at a screen and typing, results in hunched shoulders and tight pecs. The reverse plank is the perfect antidote.

The straight-arm plank, often called the full plank, is a dynamic core strengthening exercise that elevates the intensity from the forearm plank. This exercise challenges your core and engages a broader range of muscle groups, making it an excellent progression as you build up your core strength.

How to Perform the Straight-arm Plank:

1. Starting Position: Begin on all fours with your hands under your shoulders. Your knees should be slightly behind your hips. This positioning ensures that you start with a solid base.
2. Initiate the Plank: Press firmly into your hands, extending your arms fully. One at a time, lift your knees off the floor and straighten your legs. It’s crucial to align your body so that you form a straight line from your heels to your head, mimicking the upward position of a pushup.
3. Alignment Checks: Check that your hands remain directly under your shoulders to maintain proper alignment and support. Your legs should be firm and active, and your feet hip-width apart to provide stability. Engage your core throughout the exercise to support your spine and prevent your hips from sagging or piking up.
4. Maintain the Pose: Aim to hold this position for at least 30 seconds, or as long as you can maintain proper form. Over time, work on increasing the duration to build endurance and strength.

Benefits and Progression from Forearm Plank:

Transitioning to a straight-arm plank from a forearm plank introduces a more significant challenge to your core, shoulders, and entire body. In pickleball, this translates to improved stability and power in your strokes and serves. The straight-arm plank:

• Increases Core Stability: By maintaining a straight line and holding the position, you strengthen the core muscles, which are vital for powerful and controlled movements on the pickleball court.
• Enhances Shoulder Stability and Strength: This plank variation places more emphasis on the shoulders and arms, which helps in developing the strength needed for vigorous paddle swings and overhead shots.
• Builds Overall Body Strength and Endurance: Holding the full plank position helps improve your overall endurance and muscle tone, contributing to better game stamina and resilience.

Step 1: Position Yourself

• Lie on one side with your legs extended and aligned. Stack your hips, knees, and feet directly on top of each other for stability.
• Place your elbow under your shoulder to ensure proper alignment and support. Your forearm should be flat on the floor, creating a strong base.

Step 2: Initiate the Lift

• Engage your core and push your forearm and hand into the floor to lift your torso. As you lift, straighten your legs and raise your hips off the ground.
• Extend your opposite arm straight up towards the ceiling or keep it along your side, depending on your comfort and balance.

Step 3: Maintain the Plank

• Strive to keep your body in a straight line from head to heels. This alignment is crucial for activating the core and oblique muscles effectively.
• Hold this position for 20–30 seconds, maintaining tightness in your core and keeping your hips lifted.

Step 4: Switch Sides

• After holding the position, carefully lower yourself and switch to the other side to ensure balanced strength and muscle development.

Pro Tips for Modifications:

• To Reduce Difficulty: You can make the side plank easier by bending your knees and keeping them on the floor while lifting your upper body. This reduces the leverage and makes the exercise more manageable.
• To Increase Challenge: For a more significant test, try raising and lowering your hips while maintaining the plank position or extend your top arm towards the ceiling to increase the demand on your balance and core strength.

Benefits for Pickleball Players: The side plank is especially beneficial for pickleball players as it strengthens the muscles that contribute to lateral movements and quick directional changes on the court. Strengthening the obliques and hip abductors also helps improve your hitting power and control, which are crucial for executing swift, reactive plays during intense games.

Dynamic Planking

The first five plank variations were static: you get into the position and hold it for a set time. This movement is also known as isometric (iso—same, metric—length, the muscles stay the same length). Isometric exercise is powerful and often overlooked. Not only are isometrics great for building muscle with less fatigue, but they’re also surprisingly one of the best exercise modalities for cardiovascular health.

Alas, pickleball is not a static enterprise. We play because we love to move. The next plank variations all incorporate movement so you can shred you rectus abdominus while building coordinated movement patterns.

My physical therapist recommended this exercise to me and it has been a life changer. I thought it would be easy, boy was I wrong. The first time I tried it I couldn’t even do one full rep, my poor glutes medius were so weak and atrophied. After months of rather humbling work, I can finally do seven controlled reps on each side.

Starting Position:

• Lie on your left side on a comfortable mat. Ensure your knees are slightly bent and stacked one on top of the other.
• Place your left elbow directly beneath your shoulder to provide solid support for your upper body.

Initiate the Lift:

• Engage your core muscles and press firmly into your bottom forearm. This action helps to lift your hips off the floor, aiming to achieve a straight diagonal line from your head to your knees.
• Keep your abs tight throughout the exercise to maintain stability and maximize muscle engagement.

Perform the Clamshell:

• Carefully raise your top knee while keeping your ankles together, mimicking the motion of a clamshell opening.
• Pause briefly when your knee is at its highest point to intensify the muscle activation in your glutes.
• Slowly lower your knee back to the starting position, completing one repetition.

Repeat and Switch Sides:

• Perform the reps slowly: 3 seconds up, pause at the top for 5 seconds and lower for 3 seconds.
• After completing the set on your left side, switch to your right side and repeat the exercise to maintain muscular symmetry.

Benefits:

• Core Stabilization: Adding the clamshell movement to the traditional side plank increases the challenge to your core muscles, forcing them to work harder to stabilize your body.
• Glute Activation: The clamshell component specifically targets the gluteal muscles, making this exercise highly effective for strengthening and toning your glutes.

The plank shoulder tap is an advanced variation of the traditional plank that integrates an upper body movement with core stabilization. This exercise not only engages the rectus abdominis and obliques but also calls upon the shoulders, chest, and upper back, making it an excellent workout for improving rotational stability.

How to Perform Plank Shoulder Taps:

• Start in a standard plank position with your hands directly under your shoulders and your body forming a straight line from your heels to your head.
• Maintain a tight core and flat back as you lift one hand to tap the opposite shoulder gently.
• Place the hand back down and repeat with the other hand. This counts as one rep.
• The key is to keep your hips as still as possible to maximize engagement of the core and minimize rotational movement.

Benefits for Pickleball Play:

• Improved Rotational Stability: Rotational stability is critical in pickleball for managing the torsion created during powerful swings. Plank shoulder taps train the core to resist unwanted motion, allowing for more controlled and stable movements during games.
• Enhanced Core Strength: This exercise strengthens the core muscles, which are vital for every aspect of pickleball play, from serving to volleying. A strong core ensures better transfer of energy through the body, leading to more powerful and accurate shots.
• Better Swing Dynamics: The resistance to rotation developed through this exercise enhances a player’s ability to maintain a solid torso position during swings. This stability is essential for executing shots with precision, especially when reaching or stretching for a ball.
• Injury Prevention: Stronger core and upper body muscles reduce the risk of injuries caused by sudden, twisting movements and improve overall joint health.

Mountain climbers are a dynamic exercise that combines cardiovascular conditioning with muscular endurance, mainly targeting the core, shoulders, arms, and legs. This exercise can be performed in a more intense variant known as plank mountain climbers, which further emphasizes core stability and upper body strength.

How to Perform Mountain Climbers:

1. Starting Position: Begin in a plank position with your hands placed firmly on the ground directly under your shoulders, and your body forming a straight line from your head to your heels.
2. Execution: Swiftly draw one knee towards your chest without lifting your hips too high, then quickly extend it back to the starting position.
3. Alternate Legs: Immediately draw the opposite knee towards the chest as you extend the first leg back, creating a running motion.
4. Speed: The faster you go, the more intense the cardiovascular workout, but maintaining good form is crucial.

How to Perform Plank Mountain Climbers:

• This variant starts in the same plank position but involves a slower, more controlled motion. Instead of running the knees in and out, you pull one knee to your chest and hold briefly before returning it to the start. Alternate slowly, focusing on keeping your core engaged and your body stable.

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Sebastian Devereux

Hey there, I'm Sebastian Devereux. I'm 52 years old, and while I've dabbled in various sports throughout my life, pickleball has become my unexpected passion. I've been playing for about a decade now and have somehow clawed my way up to a 4.0 skill level. Trust me, it's not as impressive as it sounds; I've had plenty of embarrassing whiffs and out-of-bounds serves to keep me grounded.

By day, I work in IT, troubleshooting network issues and deciphering error messages. But by evening, you'll find me on the pickleball court, trying to perfect that elusive spin serve or working on my still-not-quite-there drop shot.

I also contribute to a pickleball affiliate website, but let's be clear—I'm no journalist. I write articles sharing what I've learned, the mistakes I've made, and the gear I've tried. My aim is to help others navigate the learning curve a bit more smoothly than I did.

When I'm not behind a computer screen or holding a paddle, I love spending time with my family, hiking, and diving into a good science fiction novel. If you're ever up for a game or just want to chat about pickleball, feel free to reach out. I'm all ears and always looking to improve.

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