Everybody has a weird album or two in their phone’s camera roll. Mine is titled “Planks.” It holds dozens of screenshots of my phone’s stopwatch — 1:41.27, 2:16:97, etc.
It’s just what it looks like: I time my planks then file them away, determined to last a little longer tomorrow. And sometimes I do, for several days in a row, then one day I’ll collapse nearly a minute short of my personal best. I’ll pound the mat like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes, then I’ll get myself together — you’ve got to stay cool at Equinox — and move on with my day.
After weeks of doing this, I’ve reached a couple of conclusions: A) timing your plank is probably the best turnkey method for testing your mental resilience and B) I’m going to keep doing it, even if the benefits of planks top out at around two minutes.
Why Two Minutes Is “Enough”
That latter point about a two-minute limit is according to a variety of exercise specialists, including Eric L’Italien, a physical therapist with Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Center. He told Harvard Health: “Two minutes [of planking] is often considered the maximum, and you don’t get much more benefit after that.” And in a 2015 Men’s Health article about extreme planking, veteran strength coach Dan John said, “It’s just a plank. More is not better.”
Physical therapists point out that for (roughly) the first two minutes of a plank, you’re training strength and motor control. You recruit the muscles of your deep core, get the glutes and spinal stabilizers involved, then simply hang out. It hurts, but leads to plank-specific strength benefits; you’ll bolster your trunk muscles, hip flexors, glutes and even shoulders.
Once two minutes is routinely within reach, you’ve strengthened the areas you need to — and could theoretically even break your planking into a series of 10-second morsels, according to one study.
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In that same Men’s Health article, a prolific Danish planker named Tom Hoel had a different take on the exercise: “You have to develop strategies to convince yourself to keep going. These are transferable to many areas in life.”
To be clear, Hoel is not of this planet. He once planked for over four hours. (And we thought people “rawdogging” flights were crazy.) Still, I identify with Hoel’s sentiment — however embarrassingly, as my planking Everest is four minutes, not four hours. After weeks of planking, I’ve come to appreciate what happens after that 120-second mark, and particularly because the adaptations are psychological, not physiological.
Extending an isometric hold like the plank is mostly a test of endurance. This is why strength coaches consider it a waste of time (and rightfully worry about form collapsing, which could stress the spine). But so long as you maintain alignment and engage your core properly — two things you would’ve been practicing on every plank along the way to two minutes — those extra seconds should be safe.
The Psychological Payoff
Planking is a long, hard look in the mirror. What are you made of? I have to go at least 75 seconds without sneaking a peek at the stopwatch, lest my arms start shaking prematurely. I’ll close my eyes, listen to whatever gonzo song I’ve chosen, aim for long and slow breaths. Once I cave in and check (which always happens eventually), the real test begins.
Some days I only last another 20 seconds. I just don’t have it in me. But on other days I break through. I’m buoyed at the two-minute mark and steel myself for the long haul. We’re toppling the PR today!
Over time, I’ve noticed that transferability Hoel was referencing. Fortitude has become a bit easier to come by — like it’s a healthy stack of firewood I can borrow from for this track workout, or that hour of research I need to do. The whole thing’s a positive feedback loop, too. I’m aware that to keep that stack high, I’ll probably need to keep planking (and keep aiming for four minutes).
So, more agony is on the horizon. But I consider it a privilege. These sessions have a tangible impact on my self-efficacy, which is the belief that you can endure future challenges. It’s the ultimate evidence-based metric. Thankfully, my camera roll’s got the receipts.
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