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Lower back, hips, knees, shoulders and wrists

Side Plank: Knees-Down

Builds lateral core stability at reduced load, offering meaningful side-body strengthening while keeping the challenge appropriate for bodies still building strength.

Stability / Core20 to 40 seconds
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How to do it

  1. 1

    Lie on your side with your knees bent behind you

    Bend the knees to roughly a right angle with the feet behind your body. Moving the contact point from your feet to your knees is what takes a large part of the load out.

  2. 2

    Set your hand or forearm under your shoulder

    Either works. The forearm removes the wrist from the equation, the hand raises the height.

  3. 3

    Lift your hips until knee, hip and shoulder line up

    The straight line runs from your knee to your head in this version, not from your foot.

  4. 4

    Pad underneath the supporting knee

    A folded blanket under the knee makes the position comfortable enough that you can concentrate on the lift.

  5. 5

    Hold 20 to 40 seconds on each side

    Rest fully between sides rather than pushing straight on.

What to watch for

With the knees down it is tempting to leave the hips behind the line and still feel like you are holding something. Send the hips forward until knee, hip and shoulder form one straight edge, and if you cannot find it, do the standing version at a wall instead.

Ways to adjust it

  • Wall version
  • Blanket under knee
  • Wall
  • Forearm
  • Forearm version

If this one is too much today

Try the gentler version instead. It asks less of you and does much the same work.

Other ways to do this movement

Every version below is the same movement set up differently, so one of them usually suits. See all Side Plank versions in one place, ordered from gentlest to strongest.

Before you try it

Move within a range that stays comfortable. Stop if this brings on sharp pain, dizziness, or symptoms that travel down an arm or a leg, and speak to a clinician before repeating it.

One movement is a start. A session is the thing.

A few questions about your body and how it is today, and Vinys builds a session around it, including which movements to leave out.

Start your first session

From the clinically authored Vinys movement library.