This week during conference night those of us who don’t do conferences came up with the idea of plank exercise challenge. I was with the specials team (that is, the PE teacher, the science teacher, the art teacher and the music teacher) and we were being bored together as we handled the school book sale, This led to a discussion of exercise in general and then, somehow, planking. Which led to our plank exercise challenge.
Isn’t There an App for That?
Now in fairness the plank exercise challenge is, according to Google, also technically an app, a 30 day workout so you can lose weight at home. But for us, the plank exercise challenge was more immediate and public than that. We actually got down on the floor at school and planked until there was only one woman left planking.
The specials team is made up of two young women under the age of 30, the art teacher, a man, so he wasn’t in the challenge, and the music teacher somewhere between my age and the young teachers who admitted right off that she couldn’t do the plank.
Teacher vs. Teacher!
The PE teacher was talking about her devotion to the plank pose and well, of course, you know me I had to tell her that I also like to plank too. During a lull in sales we decided to plank out, the science teacher joining so it was the three of us The big steel bookshelf rollers loomed around us and the PE teacher set up her phone timer under a table with a timer.
I said I would just see if I could keep up with them. The PE teacher said she had already done the plank for 2 minutes this morning. She set the timer and we started.
Let the Competition Begin
Reader, we’ve seen the competitive yogi in me before on this blog, perhaps most saliently in the post “Who Stands in the Front at Yoga and Why.” Now both of the other teachers were serious college athletes, the science teacher was in swimming and track and the PE teacher was in volleyball and is still a volleyball coach. Both of them go to the gym to lift weights. But I wanted to see if my yoga practice was equal to their gym-rat practice. And right away I saw that I had a chance. You have to keep you back flat in plank. If you start to bow, everything goes bad very quickly. And I thought I saw some bowing.
Before I Knew It, They Had Surrendered
About the 60 second mark I saw the tell tale signs of plank collapse. I urged them to “puff up the space between their shoulders” like we do in yoga, and keep the back straight, but unexpectedly both of them started to laugh and suddenly I noticed they were on the ground. We hadn’t yet gone 90 seconds
The PE teacher turned off the timer. I said “Hey wait I’m not done,” but since they turned it off, I reasoned they’d surrendered; there seemed no point to go on. I let myself down.
We were doing forearm plank like we do in Vinyasa Flow Yoga. Generally, a one minute plank is considered extremely challenging but I have been working on this daily in my home yoga practice.
Winning the plank exercise challenge was a fine moment for me, the grandma teacher, because it showed that you can really be in good shape at over 50, and in some areas at least, succeed in keeping up with … or beating … younger people.
Why You Might Want to Plank
The plank pose could help you in the following ways:
- Weight loss. Although not an exercise program in itself, the plank is extremely efficient and variable such that it’s easy to do it every day as part of a simple daily exercise practice. I will suggest that modifying eating is your number one step when wanting to lose weight. However, it does seem to me that for many, exercise is motivational and helps control appetite. (So does drinking tea, as I point out here.)
- There is no better exercise, possibly, for keeping your abs flat. Possibly standing on your head is as good. But to begin an exercise program with the plan of having a flat stomach, plank pose might just be the gold standard.
- Arm strength. This is the yoga pose to use to develop your arm strength.
- Back strength. The place where the strength is really developing is your back. Don’t underrate back strength. It helps you walk gracefully, contributes to core strength, and protects you from a host of back problems which are much more common in those of us over 50.
Planking is also an interesting conversation topic especially when you consider that Daniel Scali of Austrailia recently broke the world record for longest ever plank pose. This happened in August, 2021, with Scali planking in at 9 hours 30 minutes. Interestingly, the previous world record holder was 62-year-old ex-Marine George Hood who planked for 8 hours plus. In the video, Scali shares about the experience:
Planking on this level is probably not worth considering for us mortals.
How to Plank
In order to do the plank, lie down on your stomach with your toes braced on the floor. Your hands should rest right under your shoulders. When you are ready, push up with your hands fixed in place until your arms are straight, then let yourself down onto your elbows and forearms.
The other way, more common during yoga, is to go into plank from downward dog. From downward dog, you bring your body down until your back is flat and you are in straight armed plank. Then to do forearm plank you drop to your forearms.
Just now, tonight, I decided to try to do the plank and see how far I could get with it all by my lonesome at home. I clocked in at 2 minutes. Not bad, until I compare myself to Daniel Scali.
My Planking Career Actually Started with a Mishap
After the book sale plank exercise challenge, I thought the PE and science teacher were just a little bit put out that I had gone the longest, so I said “Please don’t feel that way. The reason I started doing push-ups everyday was because one time at the yoga studio, we were doing a handstand posture and I tried to stand on my hands and I was too weak, so my arm collapsed and I fell over rather awkwardly in front of 20 people. It was so embarrassing so I started working on arm strength every day.”
Remembering that day, I think it’s worth reflecting on that when we see a weakness we have two choices. We can either accept the weakness or we can try to correct it. The truth is either answer could be the right one But I feel very happy this evening that I was able to advance so much to be able to do the plank for 2 minutes. I bet you can too if you just practice a little bit everyday for a month or two.