Do a 5 minute plank

I just started doing planks last week—my trainer told me about them. He had me do 3 reps at 30sec each. Warned me next week would be 45sec. I can hit 45sec pretty often, but haven’t tried multiple reps yet. My goal is to get 3 reps at 45sec by Saturday 8/22 and build up to a minute the following week. I’m almost 39 and I’ve been overweight all my life. I want to be 40 and fit next year.

After doing so well in my race this morning, and still being on a high for winning the twenty-one day weight loss competition I was in, I figured it was time for another go at this tonight before running another three miles. I camped out at the gym and positioned my watch so I could see the second hand circle around and settled in for a nice long plank. The first three minutes were nothing, but then it started getting harder, and by four minutes I was dripping sweat. The last twenty seconds I had to do some forceful breathing blowing the air out my mouth, but I held on finally dropping at 5:01 just to give myself that second of leeway. Now if only Gill will finish this too.

On a different but equally positive subject, I was shopping yesterday and tried on a pair of 32 waists since I’ve been wearing a 33 and discovered that they were loose on me too. Welcome 31s. I shared that with my cousin who is 33 and had gotten down to 11.9 body fat earlier this year, and he admitted that my waist is smaller than his now even though he weighs less. The week just keeps getting better.

Instead of sitting here and fuming about the inanity that is going on here on 43Things right now, I decided to focus that energy into something more positive. Instead of feeling the burn in my brain, I let myself feel it in my arms, legs and core. I probably could’ve gone longer but I did it in my steel-toed boots that I wear while I’m on duty as medic.

Tonight I did 4:00. Next time I’m sure I’ll get closer to marking this complete. So Gill, how much longer before you can mark this done?

So I was at the gym tonight and had just finished running six miles, and was working on my chest routine. I was doing a set of chest presses, followed by a combo pushup/row with the 45lb dumbbells. (You do a pushup while holding onto the dumbbells with each hand, after pressing back up, you lift first one arm then the other completing a row with the dumbbells that you are supporting yourself on.)

These two young guys around half my age were there talking to my former trainer. After they walked away, the trainer came up to me and shared that they were asking him to confirm that I was the same guy from the movie theatre who used to have long hair and weigh a lot more. They were saying how impressed they were with the change in me. My ex-trainer to his credit put most of the credit on me, saying he only helped me with building muscle.

So anyway, I had gone in to put the 45s back on the rack and the guys told me how impressed they were and how ripped I look. They asked how I got motivated to do it, and what I’ve done to accomplish the weight loss. I shared what’s worked with me and was actually thinking wow these guys are jealous of my accomplishments.

So later after doing some core work and some 2 minute long ball squats, I realized I hadn’t done a plank in a while. Of course this was now the end of my workout and my arms were already burning. I settled in though and began my plank time test. My ex-trainer offered to stand on my back or throw a 45 on, but I ignored him. I didn’t have a good view of the clock where I was at and hadn’t grabbed my watch like last time so I had no idea how much time was really passing. When my arms couldn’t take it anymore I rolled over and looked at the clock and found I’d gone 2 minutes and 34 seconds.

I’ve got to remember to do my plank first before my workouts so I can mark this one complete.

So the Gillster and I are competing on this goal now. He had said he hadn’t been making progress on it, so I told him I’d adopt it to challenge him. After running five miles tonight, I decided to do my plank instead of my post-run stretches. Big mistake. My legs were not in the right condition to hold this for an extended period of time. I probably could’ve done a five minute side plank, but that’s not what the goal is. I quit at 2 minutes. Next attempt I’ll be warmed up but not already full of lactic acids.

240 seconds today
80% of the goal

220 seconds today

200 seconds today

not very good
I did 3 mn, 9 month ago

Doing an incremental plan – We started our base time which is 1:30. We’ll add 10 seconds on each increment until we get to 5 minutes.