Effects of a plank-based strength training programme on muscle activation in patients with long COVID: a case series, 2024, Navarro-Lopez et al

Effects of a plank-based strength training programme on muscle activation in patients with long COVID: a case series
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39364804/


Abstract

Background: This study aimed to analyse the effects of a plank-based strength training programme on muscle activation in patients with long COVID.

Subjects and methods: Case series study that included patients with long COVID who participated in a 12-week trunk and pelvic muscle strength training programme. Clinical variables and the modified fatigue impact scale (MFIS) were used to assess fatigue levels. Percentage of muscle activation during a core muscle plank was measured via surface electromyography. Pre- and post-intervention results were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and evaluated with Cohen's D effect size (ES).

Results: Twenty-one subjects participated in the study; 81% female, mean age 47.5 years (range: 28-55 years), and median duration of symptoms 21 months (range: 5-24 months); 90.5% of the participants experienced fatigue (MFIS score = 38). Muscle activation during plank exercises improved across all muscles after the intervention, with significant increases in the left (p = 0.011, medium ES) and right external oblique (p =0.039, small ES) muscles and the right latissimus dorsi muscle (p = 0.039, small ES). Additionally, significant reductions in fatigue were observed in the total MFIS score (p = 0.004, medium ES) and in the physical (p < 0.001, large ES) and psychosocial subscales (p = 0.033, small ES).

Conclusions: Results suggest that a plank-based strength training programme may be effective in enhancing trunk and pelvic muscle activation in individuals with long COVID.

 

Not especially notable, and details are paywalled anyway. Not even a poorly randomized trial with weak methodology, they published this as a case series.

What's most notable is that this paper was published just last month, and already a running magazine has published what is basically an ad for it. Probably just some freelancer who saw this as an easy few bucks. In a discipline where even systematic reviews comprising the whole literature are basically uninterpretable, this is another side of the problem: individual studies being massively overhyped in the era of click-bait nonsense. Hype that isn't much different than what PACE got. It got a lot of publicity disguised as reporting.

But when you have enough experience with this field, you pretty much realize that "a study says X" is actually about as reliable as a random Facebook post, and how the regressing state of this kind of research is being amplified with the similar problem happening in journalism, always pushing the lie on big display front page, with corrections and retractions getting just a single sentence in the back pages. If at all.


Could doing the plank help long Covid?
New research suggests core-strength exercises – especially planks – are effective weapons in the fight against long Covid fatigue
https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a62883084/plank-long-covid/

Personally I've always found that anything that triggers core muscles is the most reliable way to get PEM. It's basically the top what-not-to-do of what-not-to-dos.

 

Seems like an unwise study. The authors should have known: You have to plank and do the rubiks cube at the same time, only that can solve mind-body issues.

 

An excise I have some experience with (you'd probably not be surprised at how few studies study deadlifting, squats etc in pwME).

Beyond a tiny bit, if determined, progress is not possible in the plank, for anyone with a similar condition to mine.

And that tiny bit is IMO solely down to learning how to do the plank vs not knowing how to do the plank.

The plank was part of my training for nearly 2 years, I never got any better at it, in fact.....as my technique improved I did the opposite.

But I kept trying coz everyone else can improve, so it must be my technique.....

 

I did a mental plank back in August just from small talk. Does this count?

 

What a waste of time and money.
I did a plank yesterday for a minute after years of not doing them because I read an article about how strength exercises are better than other types to ward off frailty which is thought to be a huge risk for dementia. Nothing to lose, I thought.
I did nothing else yesterday and today I'm a write-off and a rotator cuff is giving me gyp into the bargain

 

Me too when I was moderate

sadly it’s the same misleading pattern as for everything else like this

that you can improve short term on that particular item whilst you prioritise it, and it gets a bit better and a bit better and then either ‘boom’ or that in combo with a slow decline back down with each time you stupidly keep trying to do it not getting the hint it’s now not improving but getting worse each time

so end result is actually worse health and no local improvement (maybe worse than when you started) but put off a lot of other things to achieve that - I think in any other area they might call it a term beginning with f when a result looks like something but is actually due to something else

anyway of course it’s a major issue that these things accidentally always pick timeframes like 6 or 12 weeks

 

Never heard of it. Sounds a bit like waterboarding.
Tailored torture for the masochist who wants to make the most of their misery?

 

Plank based exercises AKA isometric exercises were also found to be most beneficial for high blood pressure;
analysis released last year.

Blood Pressure UK

eta: there is an easier version of the plank which involves propping yourself up on the arm of a sofa say, rather than lying on the floor. Another useful exercise that pwME might be able to do is squeezing a stress ball in your hand/s (or similar), also supposedly good for blood pressure/circulation. I did both earlier this year. Even for only 10s of seconds at a time.