I’m a personal trainer rebuilding my core

I’m a personal trainer rebuilding my core—here's why I ditched planks for three standing core exercises

A woman in a tank top and leggings performs a dumbbell halo in a gym. She is standing, arms slightly bent, a dumbbell held in her hands over the top right side of her head. .

I had my first baby seven months ago and since then I've been rebuilding my core.

I’m finally seeing some progress and feeling stronger than I did a few weeks ago, but one core exercise in particular has gotten really boring: planks.

While planks are an excellent deep core exercise, I find them tedious.

I decided to switch the move out for a few standing core exercises and it made a huge difference to my motivation.

Here’s why I’ll be coming back to these moves again.

Three standing core exercises

A post shared by Jen Rizzuto, NASM-CPT, Pn1 (@jenrizzutofitness)

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I picked up a moderately-heavy dumbbell and performed three sets of the following exercises:

Overhead dumbbell march x 10 each side
Standing twist with knee lift x 10 each side
Halo x 10

Here's everything I noticed after doing the routine.

1. I felt more of my core working

While my core muscles switch on during planks, I found that these standing exercises required deeper levels of engagement.

They challenged certain core muscles to stabilize my mid-body, while others moved my trunk through new movement patterns.

For example, the overhead dumbbell march and standing twist recruited deep stabilizer muscles like my transversus abdominis, while also firing up the obliques on the side of my abdomen.

2. My balance and mobility were challenged

Some of the exercises I chose required me to stand on one leg, which meant I was challenging my balance at the same time as strengthening my core.

I prefer moving balance exercises to static ones, as they force you to maintain equilibrium while moving—this is more applicable to real life, as we rarely lose balance while standing still.

The halo exercise also loosened up my tight shoulders. By the end of the third round, I had a much better range of motion and felt less restriction in the joint.

3. It was fun

These standing core exercises were far more engaging—and more fun!—than planks.

I had some upbeat music playing while I was going through them, and eventually I started to match my tempo to the beat. That made the circuits feel more like a dance than exercise.

By the time my next core day rolled around, I was actually excited to run through my standing exercises again.