Brutal 5-Minute Thruster and Plank Drag Workout | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00 All right, you're almost there. Here we go.
00:01 You've got five, four, three, two, one, and time.
00:06 - Woo.
00:09 Hey y'all, Brett Williams here
00:10 for another installment of Five Minutes of Hell.
00:13 I am joined today by Matt Forzaglia,
00:16 creator of the 20 Minute Muscle Program,
00:19 available on All Out Studio.
00:21 Matt, we're not working with 20 minutes.
00:24 We've got five.
00:25 What do you got for 'em?
00:26 - Brett, today's workout is called
00:28 Thruster Drag Me to Hell.
00:29 We got two exercises, a thruster,
00:32 which is gonna be a descending ladder,
00:34 and a plank pull through,
00:35 which will be an ascending ladder.
00:36 So over five minutes,
00:37 your goal is to complete the five rounds
00:40 and come out on top.
00:41 Let's get right into it.
00:42 (upbeat music)
00:45 All right, Brett,
00:49 so we're gonna start off with 12 dumbbell thrusters,
00:51 and then we're gonna go right into
00:53 four forearm plank pull throughs.
00:55 Then we'll go back to the top.
00:56 Thruster will be 10.
00:57 Plank pull through will be six,
00:59 and we'll descend and ascend all the way
01:02 up and down the ladder.
01:03 For this workout, we'll need a moderate set,
01:06 something you'd get 15 dumbbell thrusters out.
01:09 You ready to get into this?
01:10 - Yeah, I guess we're gonna have to go.
01:12 - It's only one way to do it.
01:13 All right, let's get ready.
01:14 We're gonna clean the dumbbells up to our shoulders.
01:16 We're gonna go in five, four, three, two, and one.
01:19 Let's go.
01:20 So five minutes on that clock.
01:21 We're starting off with 12 dumbbell thrusters here.
01:23 Big focus in this thruster is your breathing
01:25 and your positioning.
01:26 So inhaling down, big exhale up,
01:29 keeping that rib cage tight,
01:30 and full extension overhead, right?
01:32 We want the dumbbells to come out over the shoulder,
01:35 not in front of the shoulder,
01:36 putting us in a poor position.
01:38 There you go.
01:41 And boom, 12.
01:42 Nice.
01:43 So, just gonna get down in a forearm plank position now.
01:45 A couple things we wanna focus on that forearm plank.
01:47 We got four reps.
01:49 So that's one.
01:50 Here's two.
01:52 Good.
01:53 Three.
01:54 And one more will be four.
01:56 That round is over.
01:58 Next round, we're going up to 10 on the thruster.
02:00 We'll go over that plank a little bit more
02:02 on that next round when we have more reps,
02:03 but right now, we got 10 dumbbell thrusters.
02:05 Now, the first three rounds of this workout
02:09 is gonna get you going, right?
02:11 So you're just gonna have to hold on through the end,
02:13 but now, again, heart rate's gonna start to rise,
02:15 stimulus is gonna start to increase.
02:17 Just finding that breath
02:18 and that control of your position here.
02:20 Looking good, man.
02:22 There you go.
02:22 Excellent.
02:25 So, depth, getting nice and low,
02:26 trying to squat down, hips just below,
02:28 parallel or to that knee.
02:30 Then we're getting right back to that plank.
02:31 So, one thing I like to think about in this plank hold,
02:33 not only are we protracting our shoulders,
02:35 engaging our lats, right, but our thighs are tight.
02:38 We wanna focus on no rotation in the hips.
02:41 So, we're lifting a stabilizer, right?
02:43 So we're gonna, hips are essentially just gonna open up.
02:46 So, really focusing on the control of the body
02:49 and the dragging of the dumbbell.
02:51 Now, as the heart rate rises,
02:52 that's gonna start to get more and more challenging.
02:55 All right, where are we at?
02:56 We got reps of eight coming up now.
02:58 Eight dumbbell thrusters.
03:02 One, good.
03:03 Two.
03:04 Now, if you need, you can always pause
03:05 at the top for a second.
03:06 Catch your breath as we come back down.
03:09 We kinda wanna pace in a thruster workout.
03:13 The thruster will be more of a pacing exercise.
03:15 In this one, not so much.
03:17 You just kinda wanna punch through those thrusters
03:19 'cause now when we get down to that forearm plank,
03:21 that's where we can breathe a little bit.
03:22 Again, slow and control on the plank, right?
03:24 Find the positioning.
03:25 Don't worry about speeding through the reps.
03:28 Nice, good.
03:29 Again, really squeeze your glutes.
03:30 Tuck that rib cage down.
03:31 Tight, tight control of the hips, right?
03:33 Feel those awful obliques.
03:35 Beauty of anti-rotation is we're fighting the stabilizers
03:38 in our midline and our obliques, right?
03:40 Not allowing this side to side.
03:42 Trying to keep our weight balanced,
03:43 and that's the challenge.
03:44 Not allowing the body to compensate
03:46 because you've removed the stabilizer.
03:48 Now, we're going into that set of six.
03:50 So we got six thrusters coming up now.
03:52 She's already in it.
03:54 The hard part of the workout's behind us.
03:56 Now is kinda where you hold on.
03:58 There it is, good.
04:00 Nice, hard extension of that hip.
04:01 Drive hard through the heels, lock out the hips.
04:03 Big punch, right?
04:04 Let the hips drive that weight overhead.
04:07 There we go, very good.
04:10 All right, we got eight double count pull-throughs.
04:14 Now you see, one's gonna start to get easier-esque.
04:17 The other one's gonna start to get more challenging.
04:19 But again, finding that stability in the hips, right?
04:21 Try to really squeeze, brace every part of your body.
04:24 Press through the floor with the elbows.
04:26 Let your lats fire up and stabilize, engage, control.
04:30 Good, slow those hips a little bit.
04:32 Try not to rock, yeah.
04:34 Good.
04:35 There we go, you can even keep it a little closer
04:37 to make your life a little easier.
04:39 See, that's what a partner is for, to help you out.
04:41 All right, last round coming up.
04:43 Time is making its way down.
04:45 It's getting close to the finish.
04:48 Four thrusters.
04:49 - Don't give me a bonus.
04:50 (laughing)
04:51 - Hey, let's throw an extra round in there if we want.
04:54 Good, there you go.
04:55 Now, you look forward to that last round of thrusters.
04:57 Those are over the heart rate's up, nice metabolic burn.
05:01 Now we go right down, but now we got 12 pull-throughs.
05:05 All right, so now we're on the back end of that ladder.
05:08 New challenge in that playing pull-through.
05:10 So midline's starting to burn out, heart rate's pumping.
05:13 Again, the stability, the control of the hips
05:15 will always become a little bit more challenging.
05:18 So again, slow the movement down, focus on the position.
05:21 Always about the position, because the efficiency
05:23 in a position will actually allow you to move longer,
05:26 and yes, you'll get stronger.
05:27 There you go.
05:30 Excellent job, excellent job.
05:31 Squeeze your thighs a little tighter.
05:32 Squeeze those hips under a little bit more, yeah.
05:34 There it is, very good.
05:36 You should feel that lower abdomen.
05:37 You should feel the rotation, or the fight
05:40 of the rotation of the hips when you lift that stabilizer.
05:43 Wow, 30 seconds to spare.
05:47 That is how you get it done.
05:48 How we feeling down there?
05:50 - Ooh, man.
05:52 Matt, okay, that was tough.
05:53 You seemed pretty smart, though.
05:57 And the thing that really was running through my head
06:02 as I'm going through those reps is, you know,
06:06 my brain had to be turned on the whole time
06:09 because I'm doing, you know, a power movement,
06:12 I'm squatting, thrusting overhead,
06:15 but then there's stillness on the ground
06:18 where I'm having to brace, I'm having to pull it through.
06:21 It seems like there's a lot of contrast there.
06:23 Can you tell me why you would design, you know,
06:26 a simple two-exercise workout in that way?
06:28 - Right, right, and I always say keep it simple, right?
06:30 Simple always creates complexity,
06:32 and that's exactly what we did here.
06:33 We took two movements, essentially,
06:35 they're two plank positions, right,
06:37 but we add a little twist to them.
06:38 So on the thruster, we're developing a lot of power
06:41 out of the bottom extension of the hip,
06:43 and then we have that overhead stability
06:44 with that vertical push.
06:46 Then we go down into that plank, right?
06:48 Now we're focusing on anti-rotation,
06:49 but we have a lateral pull, essentially.
06:52 Now we're gonna challenge the core slightly different
06:54 as opposed to we were overhead.
06:55 It forces you to find control in one position
06:58 and move a little bit more freely in the other.
07:01 - Okay, well, I mean, I'm definitely feeling it
07:04 because even if you're not thinking in those complex terms,
07:07 if your core is not on,
07:08 you're not gonna survive through that.
07:10 So if you wanna give your whole body,
07:13 but especially your core a challenge,
07:16 drag yourself to hell here.
07:17 Give this a try.
07:18 (upbeat music)
07:20 (upbeat music)