Work Up an Upper Body Burn with the Juggling Plank

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Your arms are gonna hate you for this one.

If there’s two things I’m not especially good at, it’s juggling and doing planks. One of them requires high strength, diligence, and balance, and the other is juggling. Hey-o. In all seriousness, though, planks are definitely one of the harder kinds of exercises, guaranteed to make you achy and breaky after just a few sets. If you’re really mad at your upper body today, though, what’s say we crank up the difficulty by combining two difficult things together: the juggling plank.

The good news is that the juggling plank doesn’t involve actually juggling. The bad news is that involves a big ol’ medicine ball and a rough approximation of juggling, as well as performing a proper plank. Hope you’re ready, because this is gonna hurt.

First, get on the ground and push yourself up into a high plank position. You want your arms to be directly beneath your shoulders. When you’re up, carefully balance on one arm. With your free arm, pick up a small medicine ball. Be careful when selecting a weight; you want it heavy enough that you can feel it, but not so heavy it collapses your plank. Toss the ball up into the air, quickly switch arms, and catch the ball with your newly freed arm. Keep sending the ball back and forth, all while maintaining your plank position. 3 sets of 12 reps of these, and your arms will be screaming.

This exercise will work your upper body primarily, though you’ll also get some good core work out of it. And who knows? Maybe after you get good, you’ll have a trick you can show at parties.