Build Your Perfect Body & Avoid Injury with Multi-Plane Training

For too long, getting fit has meant picking an activity you like and then doing it over… and over… and over again, without paying much attention to variety or training the body evenly, in all the different planes of movement. 

We’ve all done it before – you decide to enter a marathon and so naturally you run as much as you can each week, forsaking all other forms of exercise. You join a gym to ‘tone up’ and all of a sudden you’re attending 5 pump classes a week, or dropping into the weights room every day to pump out your standard routine of squats, lunges, pull-ups, curls and crunches.

But OH NO! Only a month or two into your new training regime, your knees are aching, your back is straining, or maybe you’re just starting to feel a bit stiff. Perhaps you feel just fine but notice your body is gaining a few unpleasant imbalances – for the boys it might be that one shoulder is sitting a little higher than the other, or your pecs are “sitting low/high”? For the girls, it could be that you’re getting the dreaded “bulky leg” look, or perhaps your abs and tummy (y’know, those things you wanted to look flatter) are starting to poke out in a peculiar way, despite your best efforts!

The problem with doing the same, repetitive training on a regular basis, or indeed with carrying out a training regime you think has variety (squats, crunches, etc) but actually contains multiple movements working in exactly the same ‘plane’ is that you just end up creating imbalances in your body, leading to things like injury, an inability to effectively move in the other movement planes, impeded sports performance and visual imbalances.

The most forward-thinking fitness and sport-specific training programs now have a big emphasis on multi-plane movement. But what does this mean exactly? 

Well, there are three specific planes of motion the body moves in and each of these are essential to include equally in your exercise program:

Sagittal Plane - Moving forward or backward (basic squat, bicep curl, forward lunge, crunch, close-grip pull-up)

Frontal Plane – Movements from side to side (side lunge, jumping jack, lateral shoulder raise)

Transverse Plane - Rotational Movement, or horizontal abduction and adduction (woodchop, baseball swing, Russian twist crunches)

By shifting your focus from training specific body parts (biceps, quads, hamstrings) to creating your programs around various joints and the movements they are capable of performing, you’re training the body to move effectively in the way it’s biologically evolved to – forward, backward, side-to-side, twisting, turning, jumping, balancing, etc. Your reaction time will improve, core strength will skyrocket and you create a natural, symmetrical body that looks good, feels more agile and is not injured as easily.

By challenging your body in every possible direction, you’re also guaranteed to naturally engage in a full-body workout that will burn serious calories!

Oh and did we mention, it’s also really good fun to perform a workout that involves lots of different, innovative moves at each workout, rather than sticking to the same ol’ routine. And your run times should improve too, while those pesky knee and back aches fade into the background.

Below are a few functional, multi-plane moves you can try next time you hit the gym – try choosing a few from each ‘plane’ and making a circuit out of them. You could perform each move for 40-50 seconds, rest for 10-15 seconds in between exercises, then move on to the next until you’ve completed them all. Repeat the whole circuit 3-5 times. We’ll film these for you down the track but for now, Google anything you’re not sure of!

Oh and one for the girls – if you find you have trouble leaning out your legs or arms specifically, try including as many unilateral (1-leg/1-arm) moves in your program as possible – it helps in a big way!

Sagittal Plane – squat or 1-leg squat, TRX-suspended lunge, push-up, TRX pike or knee tuck, close-grip pull-up (either full or assisted)

Frontal Plane – lateral lunge, wide-grip lat pull-down, military press, lateral dumbbell raise, side plank with hip dips

Transverse Plane – TRX high row, chest press, cable woodchop, transverse rotation with a medicine ball

Moves that combine a few different planes – lateral step-ups, squat with twisting press, medicine ball woodchop with squat, curtsey squat with cable or resistance band row, exploding star squats/burpees