What muscles does the hollow hold work?

The abs do the work, holding your pelvis tucked and your ribs pulled down so your lower back stays flat. Your hip flexors hold your legs off the floor. Nothing shortens during the hold, which is what makes it isometric rather than a rep.

Why does my lower back lift off the floor?

Because the pull of your arms and legs has become more than your abs can resist. That is the end of the set rather than a form problem to fight through. Bend the knees or bring the arms down and the same position becomes holdable again.

How long should I hold a hollow hold?

Until your lower back leaves the floor, and not one second past it. The exercise has a built-in endpoint, which is rare and useful, so use it instead of a clock.

Is the hollow hold better than a plank?

It is more adjustable. A plank has far more research behind it and only a few ways to change its difficulty. A hollow hold has almost none by name, and you can dial it by inches. They resist the same thing from opposite sides.

How do I make hollow holds easier?

Shorten your body. Bend the knees, bring the arms to your sides, or both. The closer your weight sits to your hips, the less there is for your abs to resist.

Is a hollow hold the same as abdominal hollowing?

No, and it is a common mix-up. Abdominal hollowing means drawing your navel inward toward your spine. The hollow hold is a body position. Studies about one tell you nothing about the other.

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Bodyweight · intermediate · waist

Hollow hold

Also called Hollow body hold, Dish hold, Banana hold, Hollow position.

The short answer

A hollow hold lies you on your back, presses your lower back flat into the floor, and lifts your arms, head, shoulders and legs just off it so your body makes a shallow dish. How far you extend the legs is the setting on it, and the demonstration holds the position with the knees bent and the arms long overhead. Your abs are the muscles doing the work, holding your pelvis tucked and your ribs down while the weight of your outstretched arms and legs tries to pull your back into an arch. Your hip flexors hold the legs up. Nothing moves, and the moment your lower back leaves the floor the hold is over.

How to do it

Step oneLie flat on your back with your arms extended overhead and your legs straight.
Step twoPress your lower back firmly into the floor and engage your abs.
Step threeSimultaneously lift your arms, head, shoulders and legs off the floor, keeping your legs together and either straight for the full position or bent at the knee to shorten it.
Step fourYour body should form a slightly curved dish or hollow shape.
Step fiveHold the position for the desired duration while breathing steadily.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

You can see daylight under your lower back.

WhyYour pelvis has tipped forward and your back has arched, which means your abs have stopped resisting the pull of your arms and legs. This is not a version of the exercise. It is the exercise having finished.

FixEnd the set there rather than holding on. Then choose a shorter shape for the next one, knees bent or arms down at your sides. Every second held with the back flat counts, and none of the seconds after it do.

Your neck is what gives out first.

WhyThe chin has poked up toward the ceiling, so the head is being held by the front of the neck rather than resting in line with the shoulders you already lifted.

FixKeep a small gap under your chin, roughly the width of a fist, and look at a point on the ceiling just past your toes rather than straight up. If the neck still leads, leave your head down on the floor and hold everything else.

Your legs creep higher as the seconds pass.

WhyRaising the legs shortens the distance between your hips and the weight of them, so the hold gets steadily easier while looking almost identical from across the room.

FixPick a leg height at the start, a few inches off the floor, and hold that height rather than the position generally. If the legs will not stay there, that is where the set ends.

You can only hold the full shape for a couple of seconds.

WhyThe full position with arms overhead and legs straight is the hardest version of the exercise, not the entry point, and most people meet it first.

FixShorten your body. Bend the knees, or keep the legs long and put the arms at your sides, or tuck both. Straighten one part at a time over weeks. The shape you can hold with your back flat is the right shape today.

Hollow hold or plank

These are the same job from opposite sides, which is why doing both feels redundant and is not.

Both resist your lower back arching. A plank does it face down, with gravity trying to drop your hips toward the floor. A hollow hold does it face up, with the weight of your outstretched arms and legs trying to pull your pelvis into a tip and lift your back off the ground.

The practical difference is what you can adjust. A plank is set by your bodyweight and the distance between your elbows and your toes, so there are only a few honest ways to change it. A hollow hold is set by how far your arms and legs are extended from your hips, which you can change by inches. That makes it unusually easy to find a version that is genuinely hard for you today.

If you want one, take the plank, which has far more measurement behind it. If you want a way to keep the same job hard as you get stronger without adding weight, the hollow hold is the more adjustable of the two.

Hollow hold or hollow rock

The rock takes the same shape and swings it back and forth along the floor, and it looks like the harder version because it is more tiring.

What the rocking adds is momentum. Once the body is swinging, part of each cycle is being carried rather than held, and it becomes easy to keep going with a shape that has already started to come apart.

The hold has no such escape. Either your back is on the floor or it is not, which makes it the more honest of the two and the better place to learn the position. Rock afterward if you enjoy it, not instead.

Where this exercise came from, and what that means

The hollow body is a gymnastics position before it is a training exercise. It is the shape a body holds through a swing on a bar or a handstand, which is why gymnasts drill it, and it arrived in general training on the back of that reputation.

It is worth being straight about the consequence: there is very little research on this exercise by name. Almost everything written about it, including confident lists of exactly which muscles it recruits and in what order, is coaching material rather than measurement. What we can tell you is what the position is and what makes it harder or easier, because that is geometry rather than a claim.

One clarification that saves confusion. The hollow hold has nothing to do with the abdominal hollowing maneuver, which is a technique of drawing the navel inward and has its own separate and much-argued literature. Pages sometimes cite studies of one while describing the other. They are different things.

And the usual limit applies. It trains the muscle. It does not decide what is visible over it, and it will not fix how you stand.

What it is for

The hollow hold is a bodyweight isometric exercise targeting the abs, holding a shallow dish shape with the arms and legs raised off the floor and the lower back pressed into it. How far the arms and legs are extended from the hips sets the difficulty, and the demonstration holds it with the knees bent and the arms long overhead.

Questions people ask

What muscles does the hollow hold work?: The abs do the work, holding your pelvis tucked and your ribs pulled down so your lower back stays flat. Your hip flexors hold your legs off the floor. Nothing shortens during the hold, which is what makes it isometric rather than a rep.
Why does my lower back lift off the floor?: Because the pull of your arms and legs has become more than your abs can resist. That is the end of the set rather than a form problem to fight through. Bend the knees or bring the arms down and the same position becomes holdable again.
How long should I hold a hollow hold?: Until your lower back leaves the floor, and not one second past it. The exercise has a built-in endpoint, which is rare and useful, so use it instead of a clock.
Is the hollow hold better than a plank?: It is more adjustable. A plank has far more research behind it and only a few ways to change its difficulty. A hollow hold has almost none by name, and you can dial it by inches. They resist the same thing from opposite sides.
How do I make hollow holds easier?: Shorten your body. Bend the knees, bring the arms to your sides, or both. The closer your weight sits to your hips, the less there is for your abs to resist.
Is a hollow hold the same as abdominal hollowing?: No, and it is a common mix-up. Abdominal hollowing means drawing your navel inward toward your spine. The hollow hold is a body position. Studies about one tell you nothing about the other.