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The standing wall plank exercise is one of the core exercises in my Strengthen Your Core program and my online course, Building a Stronger Core. It is specifically designed as a core exercise for beginners and seniors.
Standing Wall Plank Benefits
My clinical opinion is that everyone will benefit from the standing wall plank (or any well executed plank, for that matter).
Here are five primary benefits from the standing wall plank exercise:
- First, the standing wall plank is a great starter (or restarter if you are just returning) exercise to reinforce proper postural alignment that you will take into your daily activities, whether that is opening a door or lifting an object. Your push and pull activities will be easier and safer.
- Second, the standing wall plank creates resistance in your abdominal region and allow you to build core strength.
- Third, it is safe for the spine and can be done by most anyone.
- Fourth, it engages your shoulder musculature as you push into the wall. This allows you to build upper body strength that you can take into daily activities like opening and closing doors.
- Fifth, the weight bearing through the wrists, forearms and upper arms benefits the bones in those area. If you cannot weight bear through the wrist when you do the standing wall plank, then use your forearms to support you. The result? The bones in your forearm will feel the effects and benefit from the stress.
Follow the video below and find the standing wall plank that is best for you. Use the follow-on planks to progress your plank portfolio and get stronger.
In the video, below, I demonstrate variations of the standing wall plank exercise and follow up with more progressive and challenging planks.
Standing Wall Plank Exercise for Seniors and Beginners
It is important at this point to stay strong through the shoulders and don’t round your back. Keep your posture in good form. Use the strength of the shoulder blades and of the rotator cuff muscles to draw the shoulders down and back.
Hold it for the duration, then step out, and back up again.
Standing Wall Plank with Stability Ball
A variation of the wall plank exercise would be to make controlled movements of the ball. Control the movement of the ball in various directions:
- To the right and back to center.
- To the left and back to center.
- Up and back to center.
- Down and back to center.
You can even move up on diagonals, or make circles with the ball.
At any point, you start to feel stress in the back or any discomfort in the shoulders, that’s your body telling you that you did enough right now.
Come back and do it again in 10 seconds, 15 seconds, or 30 seconds. Those are standing wall plank exercise variations that you can do with the ball up against the wall.
Here are the instructions for the wall plank exercise with stability ball.
- Place the ball just below shoulder height.
- Point your hands in towards the wall.
- Point fingers towards the wall.
- Tuck shoulder blades down and back.
- When you stand tall, you should feel a little pressure through the shoulders because you have to hold the ball in this position.
- At this point the standing wall plank exercise does not involve a lot of core work.
- To engage your core, take a step back about six inches back.
- As you start to lean into the ball, you will feel your abdominals start to engage.
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Standing Wall Plank Exercise Variation with Cushions for Support
Another standing wall plank exercise variation in my book, Strengthen Your Core, is to use the ball up onto and against a sofa.
Some of you might find that it too difficult to go from the standing wall plank to one with the sofa as a support. To address this, you can double up the sofa cushions
Wall Plank Exercise With Cushion
If you find that your shoulders and wrists are really uncomfortable in this position, then, by all means, you could certainly do the plank with your forearms up against the ball.
- Position as shown in the video.
- Forearms are shoulder width apart.
- Push into the ball as you step back.
- Keep your abdominals tight.
Core Strengthening Exercises for Seniors
The standing wall plank exercise using the sofa for support is one of a number of plank core exercises from my book, Strengthen Your Core and my online course, Building a Stronger Core.
I cover several variations of this exercise in this blog post. The exercises are appropriate core strengthening exercises for seniors and beginners because they improve their core strength while allowing them to gradually increase the challenge in each variation. Let’s cover each variation.
Challenge #1
This basic challenge is a good starting core strengthening exercise for many seniors. Follow these steps:
- Take a sofa cushion and place it on top of the ottoman. This will reduce how far you have to reach down to the stability ball and make this plank easier to do.
- Place another sofa cushion firmly against the wall or into the back of the sofa and use the back to support the ball.
- Placing extra cushions in these locations should create a space of about eight inches between you and the wall.
- During the gentler variation, allow the ball to rest into the back of the chair or into the back of the sofa.
- Push into the ball.
- Your fingers always push in the direction of the force.
- Your force should be directed in a diagonal direction towards the back of the chair — almost where the chair and the cushion meet.
- Engage your shoulder blades.
- You should feel the pressure.
- Take a half a step back.
- You should feel a little more weight through your shoulders.
- Control the ball and move it right and left.
- You do not have to control all the directions of the ball because it’s resting up against the back of the sofa (or wall).
Challenge #2
You can make any of the core strengthening exercises for seniors more challenging when you pull the ball away from the back of the sofa.
In this variation, you have to control the ball when it is sitting slightly away from the back of the sofa. The back of the sofa is there in case you need backup. Here are the instructions for this variation:
- Shift the stability ball forward away from the back of the sofa and rest it unsupported.
- Step back.
- Now your shoulders have a much greater load because you have to control the ball.
- Move it back, forth, and side to side.
- This requires a lot more effort both in the abdominal wall and through the shoulders.
- You will hold your plank for the duration that is necessary for you.
- Step out (or slightly forward) and stand in a relaxed stance.
Challenge #3
Now we’re going to progress the difficulty or challenge of this core strengthening plank exercise for seniors. Here are the instructions:
- Remove the sofa pillow on top of the sofa or ottoman. This will lower height by about eight inches.
- Put the ball up against the back of the sofa.
- Make sure that everything feels good and that you are in control. You should be able to hold this for the duration of your pose.
- When you are comfortable you can add to the challenge.
- Move the ball two inches away from the back of the sofa.
- Fingers are pointing down in the direction of your force.
- You do not want your force going back or else that’s where the ball is going to go.
- You want the force to be where you want the ball to stay.
- Step back and draw your shoulder blades down and back.
- Draw your hands firmly into the ball, long through the back of the neck.
- If you wanted an additional challenge whether at this height or the other height, you can start gently rocking the ball to the left, to the right, even towards the back but don’t bring it too far this way in case it goes off the sofa.
Challenge #4
Here is another variation of the core strengthening exercises for seniors and beginners. If you are comfortable with the plank and want add a challenge for the hip girdle or for your ankle, you could always transfer the weight to one foot and lift the other foot.
- Lift your left foot off the floor.
- If you’re not comfortable actually lifting the foot off, just the act of transferring the weight to one foot to one side and then transferring the weight to the other side adds to a great challenge that can be incorporated within this plank.
Strengthen Your Core
Strengthen Your Core is an exercise program designed for people at all levels to develop their core strength. There are over seventy poses presented in the program at four different levels: Beginner, Active, Athletic and Elite. The seventy poses have many variations. So the possibilities for you are almost endless!
But Strengthen Your Core is not about quantity of poses. There is one ideal pose for you and a progression of poses that will build your core strength. The goal of Strengthen Your Core is to find that ideal pose for you.
Margaret Martin
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