There was still another exercise article in the San Diego Union Tribune that left much to be desired. They describe an exercise in which you begin standing with your hands flat on the ground, legs straight, and then inch your hands away from the body until you are in a full plank position. You then do three push-ups and return by inching your way back home to the original position.
According to the article, this exercise involves the shoulders, triceps, pecs and hamstrings. It definitely involves the first three but it does not involve the hamstrings. It does however, strongly involve the abdominal muscles, which were omitted.
That it left out the abdominals was surprising. As I’ve noted in other blogs, in this weekly feature they typically tell the reader to contract the abdominals on just about every exercise. But yet, when the abdominals play a major role, they leave them out!
Instead they focus on the hamstrings which are not involved in the lowering or raising of the body. The major muscles involved are located on the anterior side of the body which includes the hamstring antagonists, the hip flexors.
Articles such as this makes you wonder where they get their information from. They certainly do not get it from authoritative sources such as a good book on kinesiology. As a result, the layperson is once again misled in regard to the benefits that he or she can expect from doing this exercise.
For more information on this topic see Kinesiology of Exercise and Body Shaping.