The plank-off challenge

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w-uD-uPCBQ]George Hood Sets Guinness World Record in Abdominal Plank-Dec. 3, 2011 - YouTube[/url]

here's some motivation. pretty insane.

[QUOTE=NZ primal Gwamma;1022846]woohooo I just did me a 1 minute 30seconder !!!!! yay for me
Us old saggy baggy wrinkly chicks can still surprise ourselves !!!!!![/QUOTE]
WTG Gwamma! Are you really so old? You don't seem it.

I did 94 seconds this eve. I kind of cheated by borrowing a stopwatch from a member of the gym staff. Prior to that I had to use a clock up on the wall to time myself and couldn't look up to see it until I'd collapsed. I don't take my mobile into the gym and don't wear a watch as my body kills them within a few months these days. There was always a danger of someone blocking my line of vision to the clock and introducing an element of doubt into the timing. Luckily that has only happened on my second plank of a workout which was never going to break my personal best.

I am wondering whether not being able to track the duration (OK - I only did ballpark counting previously) can be a useful tool for improving more quickly due to psychological factors, i.e. one tends to overshoot effort in order to be sure of beating one's personal best.

Or perhaps I'm just bloody determined, or the potatoes are helping! Yay for potatoes.

[QUOTE=sjmc;1023660][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w-uD-uPCBQ]George Hood Sets Guinness World Record in Abdominal Plank-Dec. 3, 2011 - YouTube[/url]

here's some motivation. pretty insane.[/QUOTE]
That is awesome. Yes it motivates me to keep on pushing myself. That's all I can do.

Just did 5 min front plank, it was my little personal challenge for my birthday. I went from 3:45 in about 2 weeks, did 15 secs increments every 3 days or so.

Do you guys really think that anything above 5 min is going to have diminishing returns? (there was a post in thread along the lines)

I'm going to switch the focus a bit to the side planks (currently I can do up to just around 2 min each side), mainly because the muscles there look so nice when pumped up ... of course the core strength is the main benefit.