Day 22 is the hardest plank card in the program, and the giveaway is what is missing from it. There is no standard front plank anywhere: it runs a side elbow plank on each side, then a raised leg elbow plank on each side. Thirty seconds each, two minutes, and every one of those minutes is spent in a compromised position.
Both halves of this card remove support. The side planks take away two of your four contact points and rotate you onto one forearm and the edge of one foot, so the obliques and the deep lateral muscles hold your entire hip line off the ground on their own. The raised leg elbow planks then return you face down but take away a foot, which forces the core to stop the pelvis rotating toward the empty side while it is already working to keep the body straight. Front planks are a strength position; these four are stability positions, and stability is what the last three weeks have been building toward.
In the side planks, press hard through the supporting forearm to keep the shoulder from collapsing, lift the bottom hip high and hold your head in line with your spine. In the raised leg planks, keep both hip bones pointing at the floor and the lifted leg straight at roughly hip height. If a position starts to fail, take the micro-break the card allows and get back into it - 30 seconds broken into two honest halves beats 30 seconds of sagging.
No front plank anywhere on this card - your sides have been promoted.
Make it Harder: Walk your elbows slightly forward of your shoulders in the raised leg planks; a few centimetres lengthens the lever considerably.
Make it Easier: Take a deliberate ten-second reset between the four holds rather than flowing straight from one into the next.
