Please, if you have money that you can just throw away, throw a little bit my way instead of wasting it on completely worthless contraptions that only serve to gather dust after emptying your pockets. The price range on these worthless contraptions go as high as $299.00 US!

But David, this will make doing planks fun!

NO, IT WON”T!

But, they say it will!

AND THEY PROVE IT!

If you are one who easily falls for this type of deceptive advertising, I have some ocean front property I can sell to you for just a nominal cost right here in the middle of the country.  I will be happy to accept cash.

Why would this be a bad purchase?

Simply put, planks are just not all that fun, and you are not going to really make them fun even with a game console. Even if you can hold a plank for a long enough duration to get into playing a video game, there are far better things you could be doing with your time to benefit your core. Once you’re able to hold a plank for 30 to 60 seconds, there’s no need to learn to hold for extremely long durations. Holding a plank for 5 or 10 minutes–while very impressive–isn’t necessarily going to have increasingly beneficial returns. There are truly no additional benefits to holding the pose for extended periods of time except to show off.

But they tell me I can plank and play in order to get ripped abs!

Many people desire the shredded six pack look, and there is nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, planks alone will never get you there. The visibility of abdominals is associated with body fat percentage, and the size of the underlying muscle. What you need to understand is this simple truth:

“Abs are made in the kitchen!”

You will never be able to see your abs — unless a healthy diet is part of the equation.

The Western Diet that surrounds all of us is working against our health all the time, and if you’re not making a conscious effort to do better for yourself and your family you’re losing ground. It has become too easy to sit on your butt while thinking about lunch and debating if you should take the healthy route or cave in and grab a sandwich and fries from the local fast food drive through. These kinds of poor nutritional habits will never allow you to have visible abdominal muscles no matter how much fun you might find your new fangled ab workout contraption to be. The truth is most of us will sadly, never be capable of out-exercising a bad diet, regardless of how many workouts we might cram into a week, nor how much we can wish this to be true.

In fitness, planks indeed are a legit ab exercise. But there’s no need to treat them as the “one ab exercise to rule them all.” You will be  better off by doing push-ups, which are basically leveled-up planks with more muscle recruitment of the upper body. Instead of mindlessly holding a plank for a few minutes, why not try to bang out push-ups for the same amount of time instead? You get the same core work while also building some strength, burning more calories, increasing mental toughness and creating the confidence that comes along with it at the same time.

I recommend you save your money and not buy this Stealth Core workout contraption. If you are going to throw away hard earned cash on fitness equipment that will soon go unused, then at least get something you can hang your clean laundry from.