Alberta woman, 61, breaks her own world record by planking for 5 hours
DonnaJean Wilde, a grandmother of 12, broke her own Guinness World Record for holding the longest female abdominal plank during the Huntsman World Senior Games in Utah this week.
DonnaJean Wilde, a grandmother of 12, says she multitasks to pass the time
Natalie Stechyson · CBC News
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You can accomplish a lot in five hours.
Fly direct from Toronto to Vancouver, for instance. Or play an entire 18-hole round of golf. Run a full marathon at an average pace. Smoke a rack of ribs.
It's an objectively long stretch of time. Now, imagine holding a plank, one of the most notoriously challenging core exercises, for the amount of time it takes to cook a Thanksgiving turkey?
"I just love it," laughed DonnaJean Wilde, who at age 61 just broke her own world record for the longest time holding an abdominal plank position (female) during the Huntsman World Senior Games in Utah this week.
Wilde is a grandmother of 12 and retired teacher from Welling, Alta. And on Tuesday, in front of a cheering crowd and several judges, she held an abdominal plank for five straight hours, shattering her previous 2024 world record of four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds.
WATCH | Alberta woman holds plank for 5 hours:
Canadian woman holds plank for 5 hours, breaking world record
3 hours ago|
Duration
7:30
DonnaJean Wilde, 61, a two-time plank world record holder and a grandmother of 12, broke her own Guinness World Record for holding the longest female abdominal plank. Wilde held her plank for five hours during the Huntsman World Senior Games in Utah this week.On Friday, she told CBC News Network she was "feeling good" and waiting for Guinness to make the record official.
"It just becomes easier to do the more repeated times you do it," Wilde said.
An abdominal plank is an isometric core exercise where you hold your body straight like a plank of wood. Most adults can hold a plank for 20 to 60 seconds, according to Health magazine.
Guinness World Records notes that to successfully achieve the record, the challenger's forearms and toes must touch the ground at all times. "The remainder of the body must be lifted off the ground and be kept straight throughout."
Not her only world record
Wilde says she started planking about 15 years ago when she broke her arm and was looking for a way to stay fit.
"I love to work out. I love fitness, and I discovered I could plank with a cast on," she said.
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"And when the cast came off, it became a habit that I actually embraced and fell in love with."
When she first started, she says she could hold a plank for about a minute or minute and a half, but she kept practicing. With her family's encouragement, she kept going and minutes became hours. By 2024, she broke the Guinness World Record.
Wilde, seen in the midst of achieving her latest world record, says that while she holds her hours-long planks she likes to multitask: reading, writing and earning her master's. (Submitted by DonnaJean Wilde)
And, for good measure, she broke a second one that year by completing 1,575 pushups in one hour — the most push ups in one hour (female). She told the Guinness World Records she fell in love with doing pushups while doing 500 every day as training for her planks.
Now, she planks every day for at least a few hours. But it doesn't eat into her time, she says. She multitasks.
"Just read, do texts, whatever, do schoolwork. I did a master's degree while I was planking. Wrote a book," she said.
The book, From Minutes To Hours: I Wrote This Book While Planking, came out last year.
CBC News did not attempt to write this story while planking.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Stechyson has been a writer and editor at CBC News since 2021. She covers stories on social trends, families, gender, human interest, as well as general news. She's worked as a journalist since 2009, with stints at the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News, among others. Before joining CBC News, she was the parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award for her work on pregnancy loss. You can reach her at natalie.stechyson@cbc.ca.
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