Lateral Plank (How To, Muscles Worked & Variations)

The Lateral Plank, or Side Plank, is a foundational core stability exercise that targets the obliques and challenges your ability to resist rotation and lateral flexion. By holding your body in a straight line on one side, you engage deep core muscles, glutes, and shoulder stabilizers.

It’s a low-impact, high-reward movement that improves posture, balance, and core strength.

Primary Muscles Worked: Obliques
Secondary Muscles Worked: Transverse Abdominis, Gluteus Medius, Shoulder Stabilizers
Equipment Needed: None (mat optional for comfort)

How To Do a Lateral Plank

Step-by-Step Instructions

Set-Up:
- Lie on your side with your elbow directly under your shoulder and your forearm flat on the floor.
- Stack your feet one on top of the other, or stagger them for more stability.
- Engage your core and lift your hips off the ground, creating a straight line from head to heels.
Execution:
- Hold this position, keeping your hips lifted and your body aligned.
- Your top arm can rest on your hip or extend straight up toward the ceiling.
- Maintain steady breathing and focus on keeping everything tight and controlled.
Tips for Proper Form:
- Don’t let your hips drop—keep a straight line from shoulders to ankles.
- Avoid shrugging your shoulder—press the floor away with your supporting arm.
- Engage your glutes and core to stay stable throughout the hold.

Key Benefits

Strengthens the obliques and deep core stabilizers.
Improves balance, posture, and rotational control.
Enhances shoulder and hip stability with minimal joint stress.

Modifications and Variations

Easier Option:
- Drop your bottom knee to the ground while keeping your upper body in plank position.
- Shorten the hold duration and build up over time.
Harder Option:
- Raise your top leg into a side plank with leg lift.
- Add pulses or hold a light dumbbell overhead for an extra challenge.

Common Mistakes

Dropping the Hips: Keep the body in a straight line to maintain tension.
Shoulder Caving In: Push through the floor to keep the shoulder stable.
Rotating the Torso: Stay square—don’t let your top shoulder roll forward.

Reps and Sets Recommendations

For Beginners: 3 sets of 15–20 seconds per side.
For Core Strength: 3–4 sets of 30–45 seconds per side.
For Advanced Work: 2–3 sets of 60 seconds+ per side or add variations (leg lift, reach under, etc.).

Lateral Plank Variations

Lateral Planks are an extremely effective exercise all on their own, but the Lateral Plank position also serves as a great building block for more complex movements. If you’re feeling up to a challenge, here are a few movements you should try out.

Lateral Bridges

Lateral Bridges turn the static Lateral Plank into a dynamic movement.

Start in the same Lateral Plank position and then lower your hips and lightly tap the ground with your hip. Drive the hips back up to the starting position (or even slightly higher than the starting position).

Coaching Tip: Once planks become easy for my athletes, I like to start them off with 10 to 15 Lateral Bridges and then hold the Lateral Plank position for an extra 30-45 seconds. Combining the dynamic and static movements together noticeably ups the difficulty.

Lateral Plank Leg Raise

From the Lateral Plank position, lift the top leg up to about parallel to the ground and then lower back down and lightly tap the foot still on the ground. That lateral leg raise motion will target the hip abductors and take Lateral Planks to a whole different level of challenge.

These are great as a glute activator before a lower body lift day or as part of a core finisher at the end of a workout.

Changing Foot Positions

Lateral Plank with TRX Strap — Using a TRX Strap to place your feet in adds more instability and increases the challenge of the exercise.

There are also a ton of variations you can do by simply changing what you put your feet on.

Elevating your feet onto a bench will place more stress on the upper body to have to stabilize.

Placing your feet on a Stability Ball or inside a TRX strap will add instability. This will force the core to have to work even harder to maintain balance and stability.

Lateral Plank Alternatives

If you can’t do Lateral Planks for whatever reason, or you just want to change up your program – here are a couple of alternatives that you may be able to use as a substitute.

Want even more options? Here are 10 of my favorite Side Plank alternatives.

DB Side Bends

If getting down onto the floor is an issue, then DB Side Bends may work as a substitute. You won’t get all the added benefits that holding the plank position brings, but they are a good exercise to target the Obliques.

Oblique Crunches

If you want to keep things simple you can opt for tried and true Oblique Crunches. Lay on your back, place one foot over the opposite knee and crunch across your body. Simple but effective oblique exercise.

Lateral Plank FAQ

Here are a couple of the questions I get asked the most regarding Side Planks

Is Side Plank Better Than Plank?

I consider Side Planks and Planks two different movements with slightly different objectives. Both are ab exercises and both are static holds, but the Side Plank focuses on the Obliques and Planks focus more on the Rectus Abdominus.

I always like to include both in my programming, oftentimes as part of the same core circuit.

Is a Two-Minute Side Plank Good?

These are my favorite questions! Great athletes always want to know how they stack up against other athletes and I respect their competitiveness.

I would say, yes, being able to hold a proper side plank (without the hips slouching down or turning the chest toward the ground) for two minutes is a very respectable side plank time.

I’ve seen athletes hold planks for as long as seven or eight minutes, but two minutes would probably put you in the top half of most groups of athletes.