I've been having spine issues that came from being overly aggressive doing a plank variation ("stir the pot") and I'm wondering whether planks are necessary in general. I never get this sort of injury from swimming (while I do swim in a style that emphasizes engaging the core.)
Just curious if others have experience in not doing any specialized core training other than what you get from doing hard swimming (and whether that feels like enough)? I want to reduce risk of injury but at the same time don't want to set myself up for even worse instability from losing core strength that I feel comes from doing the planks.
With the static plank, once you've mastered over a minute it becomes more of a muscular endurance exercise, and the effort / core strength trade off drops off.
With the static plank, once you've mastered over a minute it becomes more of a muscular endurance exercise, and the effort / core strength trade off drops off.
