Everybody, listen up. There’s a fairly unfit tech reviewer about to give you all fitness tips. Many home fitness fans seek the perfect plank, but how do you know you’ve achieved it? A new iOS app from a company called Exer has the solution.
Why Is The Perfect Plank So Important?
I don’t do enough planks. I don’t do enough because they’re damn tough. When it comes to staying in one place, I would say the plank must be the toughest way to do it. It’s tough, but it’s worth it. When you practice your planks your training your core strength. This means you can improve overall body strength, reduce the likelihood of injuries and more. Planks can improve your posture, your balance, increase your metabolism and even have a positive impact on your mental health too.
All of this only happens if you get it right. Get the plank wrong and you’ll get nothing. If you can achieve the perfect plank you’ll get results even faster.
What Is A Plank?
While there are variations of the plank, I’m going to focus on the basic plank.
To achieve this you support all your weight two points of contact with your toes and your forearms on the ground. You should be fairly straight and this whole move works best when you feel you’ve engaged your core. You want to hold your plank for at least 20 seconds but you will build stamina over time.
Now, all of that came from some Googles. Don’t be listening to me. Download this app for your iPhone or iPad and let some people who know what they’re talking about help you avoid the most common plank mistakes.
What Does Perfect Plank From Exer Do?
Exer is an always free platform, which offers premium content. The platform uses your iPhone or iPad camera combined with AI and thousands of hours of athletic analysis to provide you with realtime feedback on your workout. You don’t need any additional hardware, but it is currently limited to iPhone and iPad.
With plans to release a range of AI-powered personal trainers, they’ve launched with Perfect Plank. Launching Exer on Product Hunt, the company founder Zaw Thet outlines why he created the app, and more importantly, pushed to launch part of it early. With Covid-19, remains unclear “how long people will be forced to either stay home or will not feel comfortable going into a gym, studio, or clinic”.
Does Perfect Plank Work?
Well, it felt like it did! I set my iPad up and moved six feet back, got into position and felt the burn. One thing I’ve got to say is that in a small apartment it’s tough to get your phone back far enough. You’ve got to have your full body in the frame for the AI-trainer to tell you how you’re doing.
Once I was set up though, it worked really well. My virtual trainer gave me encouragement and feedback throughout my first plank attempt.
I made the mistake of starting with 1 minute 30 seconds and realised I’m going to need to build myself up. I couldn’t perform a plank for as long as I had hoped at all. When you’ve finished your plank workout, you can watch your session back. You’ll be able to see if you managed to reach a straight line, were your shoulders and arms in the right position and overall did you perform a forearm plank that activated your glutes and quads right through to your core to make this a great ab exercise?
The good news is (I hope) is that over time you can learn from the feedback, continue to train my core and increase the amount of time I can hold a plank. Who knows, maybe I’ll even upgrade to some new plank variations too.
In his Product Hunt launch post, the founder of Exer said an Android version is coming soon along with additional virtual trainers. So don’t listen to me when it comes to fitness, but in terms of tech I think this is pretty cool and a great way to learn how to perform the perfect plank at home.
