Ab exercise: If your back gets sore before your abs…

by Elsbeth Vaino

If your back gets sore before you feel much in your abs when you do ab exercises, you may have a large anterior pelvic tilt. That is, your butt sticks out. In some cases this is a good thing as it can make your butt look great.

Looks aside, for some people, this can contribute to low back pain. Raise your hand if you or any of your clients feel planks in the low back more than the abs.

I hear this often. Many people find it hard to really work their abs without their back getting cranky. It can happen with planks and other variations like stir the pot and ab rollouts. Crunches are less common in the fitness world these days, but back when they were popular, this was an issue for some people. It certainly was for me.

Same deal with push-ups?

A large anterior pelvic tilt can also make push-ups more challenging. It makes sense if you think about it: your torso is basically sagging, which means your abs are not contracting much. Ever tried to pick up a kid or animal who didn’t want to be picked up? And they go limp or even squirmy? That’s what a push-up with a big anterior tilt is like. 

Most solutions I’ve read aren’t great

I have read many articles about helping your abs work, and generally this seems to be the advice:

1. strengthen your abs
2. squeeze your glutes during the exercise
3. “tuck” your pelvis
4. engage your TVA (transversus abdominus)
5. reverse crunches

I don’t think those work very well, and here’s why:

• Strengthen your abs as a solution to not being able to do an ab-strengthening exercise? Um, how?
• Squeezing the glutes during ab exercises can work to help engage the abs, but is it a good option? I don’t think people should have to squeeze their backside in order to use their front side.
• The pelvic tuck actually isn’t a bad suggestion.
• Engaging the TVA is similarly helpful to “strengthen the abs”. If you know what your TVA is, and are able to engage it, you’re probably also don’t feel your back more than your abs when you do a plank.
• The reverse crunch is a much more challenging ab exercise than a plank, so if you can’t plank without your back taking over, you probably won’t be able to reverse crunch either.

We use a simple exercise alternative at Custom Strength that has my clients saying things like “I really feel that in the lower abs“.

What is this amazing ab exercise?

The ab exercise for people who feel planks in their low back before they feel it in their abs is a…bench plank. A plank done with your forearms on a bench (or ottoman or other piece of sturdy furniture) instead of on the floor.

It’s so simple, you might be disappointed. Here’s the truth: Planks from the floor are too advanced for some people.

How can you tell if it’s planks from the floor are too advanced for you?

Just answer this one question:

Do you feel it in your back more than in your abs?

If you answered yes, then planks from the floor are too advanced for you.

I know that sounds disheartening. Everyone recommends planks as the basic ab strength exercise, and now I’m saying you’re too weak to start with the basics.

Let me just say it’s not you; it’s them.

And by them, I mean the people in health and fitness who suggest planks from the floor as THE starting ab exercise. If that was good advice, this article wouldn’t be one of the most visited pages on my blog and visitors wouldn’t stay on the page for an average of almost four minutes.

In other words – please don’t feel badly if the bench plank is a better choice for you. The bench plank is a great exercise that will probably help you strengthen your abs in a way that won’t bother your back.

Coaching cues for the bench plank

• We cue “ribs to pelvis” or “think of making the space between the bottom of the rib cage and the top of the pelvis as small as possible”.
• We coach our clients to hold the plank as long as they can or until they feel it in their back more than their abs. If that is only 10 seconds, then we still get them to stop at 10 seconds. Then we have them rest for a few seconds and do it again. And maybe even a third time.
• It is important to stop when you’re feeling it more in your back. At that point, you’re not really working your abs any more, and working your abs is the point of the exercise. Once you can hold the bench plank for 30 seconds without feeling it more in the back, stick with one rep (instead of two or three).
• If the person starts to feel it more in the back, we cue them to bend their knees slightly. This often allows them to feel more in their abs than in their back for a while longer.

Why does the bench plank work so well?

It’s just geometry. Raising the upper body reduces the horizontal distance between your forearms and your feet, which reduces the distance your core has to stabilize.

Interestingly a stability ball plank, which is usually considered a plank progression, also reduces this length. That means the stability ball plank is both a progression (because of the instability) and a regression (because of the reduced horizontal distance). If you’re thinking you’d rather do a stability ball plank than a bench plank, go for it. If you really feel your abs, then good choice. But if you start to feel your neck and shoulders more than your abs now, stick to the bench plank to build your abs up. The reason you might feel stability ball planks in the shoulder and/or neck more than the abs is that, if your abs aren’t strong enough (yet), you will likely find your shoulders (and neck) muscles need to take care of keeping you from falling off the ball. All that responsibility can make them cranky.

What’s that about bending the knees?

If you’re wondering why we cue people to bend their knees a bit if they start to feel the plank in their back, it’s based on a theory I have about hip flexors taking over for abs. Did you know that the psoas muscle (one of the hip flexors) originates in the low back? It then comes through the pelvis and attaches to the front of the thigh.

When you do a plank (or a bench plank), the hip flexors often help the abs, but for some people, the hip flexor can take over instead of just helping. Because they are attached to your low back, they can pull you into that sagging position. Bending your knees a bit can relax your hip flexors, relieving that pull on the back, and leaving room for your abs to step up and do the work. Or at least that’s my theory, and based on how effective this cue is, I think there’s something to it.

So, if you want to strengthen your abs but find your back is the limiting factor, take your plank up a notch (literally) and try it from a bench. Once you can do the bench plank version for more than 90 seconds, try a floor version (using the same coaching cues listed above). You may be pleasantly surprised at how different it feels than it did before you strengthened your abs with the bench.