It is kind of my running joke when I present at conferences. If you look at the number of exercises people know when it comes to sagittal plane training, it almost seems endless.

However, when we start going to frontal plane exercises, the number of exercises people feel that they can use shrinks so dramatically it looks like the following…

There is nothing wrong with these frontal plane movements, they just don ’t represent the very large number of exercises we have actually access to in developing great frontal plane strength. So there are really a few things we need to address…

-Why is frontal plane strength important
-Why we need to go beyond the side plank
-How we have better progressions of frontal plane exercises

No problem, but let's get to it!

Why Is Frontal Plane Strength Important?

Now, you probably won ’t ever hear a client of any sort really want to improve their frontal plane strength, or anyone on social media going “beast mode” on their frontal plane strength training. So, why in the world would we make it such a priority?

For one, the muscles that make up the frontal plane (pretty much everything that runs laterally on your body as you will see) keeps us from completely falling over as we move in life. Yes, when we walk, run, hike, climb stairs, you name it, the frontal plane chain of the body keeps us from completely collapsing to the side. Not only completely falling over, but having “energy leaks” and movement compensations that would result in many issues from the knees, hips, low backs, even to the shoulders, and neck.

The lateral chain help us reduce injury and move better but it can also be key in unlocking our strength potential. I ’ve told the story many times that I would work with powerlifters and competitive strongmen, not only on their competition lifts, but identifying what was missing in their training. Sure, the side plank played a role, but so did far more dynamic and progressive frontal plane strength exercises like our MAX lunge for example. Using the MAX lunge, some step-ups, and only a handful of other drills helped this powerlifter blast his squat plateau of 800 pounds.

So, if we recap, we will train A LOT of muscles at once, help be more injury resilient, move more efficiently, and be able to demonstrate higher levels of strength. Sold yet?

Why Go Beyond The Side Plank?

Don ’t get me wrong, the side plank IS an important exercise. It allows us to teach many concept of lateral stability in a more stable environment and we have a ton of progressions we can use. However, there are two things to remember, how we teach the side plank (force from the ground up) and where we go with the side plank training are the biggest keys!

After all, the goal of the side plank is to build skills and strength that allow us to move to more challenging environments. That would be simple progressions to positions like a half kneeling position.

Just like the side plank, the key is how do you use the body in this position and how are you thinking about using and moving the weight?

DVRT Master, Cory Cripe and Jordan Rudolph break down some essentials in getting a lot out of what looks like a simple exercise.

DVRT UK master, Greg Perlaki, shows a simple way to introduce owning the half kneeling position and learning how to use the core correctly.

We can amplify these benefits by using our Core Strap with a band and forcing the body to learn how to create more stability while also developing healthy shoulders and mobile hips.

Coach Robin Paget shows our DVRT lifts/chops and how we eventually take them to more dynamic movements for elevating that frontal and transverse plane stability.

Josh Henkin

Josh is an international presenter and strength coach who has taught in over 13 countries worldwide and consulted with some of the top fitness and performance programs in the world. You can check out his DVRT online fitness educational certifications/courses HERE and get 20% off with code “pb20”