Charlotte Hellhoff: Hi, this is Charlotte and Michelle from Performance Private Training in Columbia, Maryland. We are going to talk about core training and today we are going to talk about how to perform a plank using a stability ball or a swiss ball.

So Michelle, if I can ask you to roll out and put your forearms on the stability ball, push yourself up, very good, excellent. Michelle is still keeping her abdominals very tight, making sure to protect her lower back that way. Keeping your body straight, hips straight. You can bend your knee slightly, if you feel like your back is giving up a little bit there, very, very good. That's awesome. To make this a little bit harder and a little bit more challenging, we do something that we call "write in your name". Michelle is going to write her name in cursive that is using the ball.

Very good, Michelle is now writing her name, very good .

This is making the exercise a little bit more challenging, excellent. This is making it definitely more challenging. She is using more of her core muscles, definitely your obliques as well as your abdominals, your lower back and your glutes, excellent.

Now Michelle has the ball pushed up against the wall. Therefore, the ball is not going to be rolling anywhere. This makes it a little safer. Again, keeping her body tight, nice and tight, abs tight, back straight. Again, if her back is bothering her a little bit, just bend your knees slightly. It actually flattens out your back a little bit more.

Now as a beginner, if you are starting with a modified plank, you probably are going to be able to hold this for may be 20-30 seconds. Definitely, as you get more used to this, just add on the seconds up to a minute or however many minutes you want to do this for, up to three sets. So the next thing we are doing here, we are going to show you how to do even a more challenging plank by putting your feet on the stability ball.