Plank Pull Through: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Weight to Use

The plank pull through is a high plank in which you reach under your body with one hand, grab a weight sitting outside the opposite hand, and drag it across the floor to the other side while your hips stay dead level. Some coaches call it the plank drag. It's an anti-rotation core exercise: the weight matters far less than your ability to stop your pelvis twisting every time a hand leaves the ground, which is why 6kg done properly is harder than 16kg done badly.

One thing to clear up before the technique. This is not the cable pull through, which is a standing hip hinge for the glutes and hamstrings done with a rope and a low pulley. If you came looking for that movement, follow the link; the two exercises have nothing in common beyond the name.

How to do a plank pull through

You need one dumbbell, kettlebell or sandbag and a patch of floor it can slide on. A mat under your hands and feet is fine, but the weight itself drags better on bare floor or a firm, smooth mat.

1. Set the weight. Place it on the floor just outside your left hand, level with your lower ribs, not up by your shoulder.
2. Build the plank. Hands under shoulders, arms straight, feet wider than hip-width (roughly 60cm to 80cm apart for most people). Squeeze your glutes and pull your ribs down so there's a straight line from head to heels.
3. Shift, then reach. Press the left hand hard into the floor and lean a few centimetres onto it. Only then lift the right hand and reach under your chest to the weight.
4. Drag it across. Pull the weight along the floor in a straight line until it sits outside where your right hand was. Keep it in contact with the ground the whole way. Think "slide", and take about two seconds over it.
5. Replace the hand and reset. Put the right hand back down, re-square your hips, breathe out, and repeat with the left hand reaching under to drag it back.

That's one rep each side.

Muscles worked

Lifting one hand turns a four-point plank into a three-point one, and gravity immediately tries to drop the unsupported side of your body towards the floor. The muscles that stop that happening are the ones this exercise trains.

• Obliques and transversus abdominis. These resist the twist. Research on bridging exercises found that removing one point of support changes how the obliques share the work: in a unilateral bridge, internal oblique activity on the supporting side rose to nearly three times that of the external oblique, compared with a roughly even split in the two-legged version (Stevens et al., BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders). That study used a supine bridge, not a plank drag, so treat it as supporting evidence for the principle and not a measurement of this exercise.
• Rectus abdominis. Holds your ribs and pelvis together so your lower back doesn't sag. An EMG comparison of ten core exercises concluded that prone-position moves such as the plank are good alternatives to crunches and sit-ups for recruiting the abdominals (Escamilla et al., Sports Health).
• Glutes and quads. They lock the hips and knees, and the glute on the side of the lifted hand works hardest to keep that hip from dipping.
• Supporting shoulder, serratus anterior and triceps. One arm carries most of your upper-body weight for a couple of seconds per rep.
• Lats and rear deltoid of the dragging arm. They move the weight, though the load is too light and the range too short to count as proper back training. The same Escamilla paper did record higher latissimus dorsi activity in the full plank on toes than in crunches or knee planks, so the lats are involved before you even start pulling.

Benefits

The main reason to do it is that it trains your trunk to stay still while your limbs move, which is what your core does when you run, carry shopping in one hand or press a dumbbell overhead. A standard plank gets easy quickly and adding time to it is a poor way to progress; the pull through adds difficulty without adding minutes.

It also scales with almost nothing. One light weight covers months of progress because you can slow the drag, narrow your feet or switch to a higher-friction object before you ever need a heavier one. That suits a small home gym well.

There's a shoulder benefit too. Each rep is a brief single-arm support, so you get stability work for the planted side without any pressing.

Be realistic about one thing: this won't build much muscle. No published EMG study that I could find has tested the plank pull through itself, and the closest work, a comparison of eight plank variants, found the biggest abdominal and oblique activity in suspended and roll-out planks (Calatayud et al., 2017). The authors' broader conclusion was that you can progress core muscle activity by changing the plank variant, and that's the fair claim to make for the drag as well.

Common mistakes

Hips swinging. The classic fault. The hip on the reaching side lifts and rotates open so the arm has less far to travel, and at that point the obliques are no longer resisting anything. Film yourself from behind or put a foam roller across your lower back; if it falls off, go lighter and slower.

Feet too narrow. A hip-width stance makes anti-rotation much harder, which sounds like a good thing until it forces the swinging described above. Start wide. Narrowing your feet by 10cm at a time is a progression you earn later.

Lifting instead of dragging. Picking the weight up and placing it down turns the move into a sloppy renegade row and removes the friction that makes the pull through useful. Keep the weight on the floor from start to finish.

Weight set too far forward. If it sits level with your shoulders, you'll shrug and reach forwards, and your neck does the complaining. Lower ribs is the right spot.

Rushing. Fast reps let momentum carry you past the hard part, which is the second or two when only three points are on the ground.

What weight to start with

Honest ranges, assuming you can already hold a solid high plank for 45 seconds:

Level	Dumbbell or kettlebell	Sandbag
New to the move	4kg to 8kg	5kg
Comfortable with planks and push-ups	8kg to 12kg	5kg to 10kg
Experienced lifter	12kg to 20kg	10kg to 15kg

Sandbag numbers run lower because fabric grips the floor far more than rubber or cast iron does. Surface changes things as well: a kettlebell on laminate glides, while the same bell on a grippy rubber gym floor feels like it's gained several kilos.

Hex dumbbells are the easiest tool because they don't roll, and our guide to the best hex dumbbells covers the fixed-weight options. Round-plate adjustable dumbbells work but tend to rotate as you pull. A kettlebell dragged by the handle is the smoothest version, so if you're buying one weight for this and for swings, see the best kettlebells in the UK. If you're unsure where your general strength sits, what weight dumbbells should I use gives broader starting points.

Regressions, progressions and variations

Easier:

• Shoulder taps. Same plank, same wide feet, no weight. Tap the opposite shoulder and hold for a second. If your hips rock here, you're not ready for the drag.
• Knee plank drag. Drop to your knees with a 2kg to 4kg weight. Less load on the trunk, same pattern.
• Bird dog and dead bug. The bird dog and dead bug teach the same "limbs move, spine doesn't" skill on the floor with far less at stake.

Harder:

• Narrow stance. Bring your feet towards hip-width.
• Pause drag. Stop halfway and hold the weight still under your chest for two seconds.
• Sandbag drag. More friction, and the bag deforms, so the pull is longer and stickier.
• Bear plank pull through. Knees hovering 5cm off the floor in a bear crawl position. Quads burn, and the shorter base makes rotation harder to control.
• Drag into row. Drag across, then row the weight once before setting it down. This is the bridge to a full renegade row.

For standing anti-rotation work with a band or cable, the Pallof press trains the same quality from a different angle, and the side plank and Copenhagen plank cover the lateral side of the trunk that the pull through only touches.

Programming

Put it near the end of a session, after your heavy lifts, because a tired trunk before squats or deadlifts is a bad trade.

• Learning it: 2 sets of 5 drags per side, light weight, 60 seconds rest.
• General core strength: 3 sets of 6 to 10 per side, twice a week, resting 45 to 60 seconds.
• Circuits and conditioning: 20 to 30 seconds of continuous slow drags, paired with something that doesn't hammer the shoulders, such as kettlebell swings.

Progress in this order: stiller hips, slower drags, narrower feet, then more weight. Adding load first is how people end up swinging. Two sessions a week also fits the NHS advice to do muscle-strengthening activity on at least two days a week.

If your wrists ache in a straight-arm plank, grip a pair of hex dumbbells or push-up handles for the supporting hand, and if your lower back aches, stop the set; that's your abs giving up, and carrying on only practises the wrong position. You'll find more core and conditioning guides on the workouts hub.

Recommended reads

1. Renegade row: how to do it and muscles worked
2. Pallof press: the standing anti-rotation exercise
3. Plank: form, benefits and variations
4. The best hex dumbbells in the UK
5. The best kettlebells in the UK