The Story of The Five Minute Plank

The Challenge:

Can a person who is capable of doing a 45 second plank achieve a 5 minute plank within a time frame of 30 days? Of course, right?

The Result:

It is indeed possible for one to conquer such a challenge. But the truth is that I failed, and I fell short by quite a bit. I managed a 03:45 (minutes:seconds) plank at the end of the 30 days. But I didn’t give up just yet.

How it all started…

In the middle of summer, 2017, I casually told one of my best friends that I’d like to focus on my plank, and would like to achieve a 5 minute plank in 30 days. This friend of mine is a professional physical trainer. He was quite surprised, and told me that I could very well be underestimating the effort required for a 5 minute plank. But nonetheless, he rooted for me, as any good friend would. And that’s how it all began. I just wanted to prove to myself, and him, that I’m perfectly capable of beating this challenge.

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The Frustration:

Throughout these 30 days, the experience that frustrated me the most is that every time I pushed myself to the limit, I felt wrecked at the end of the plank. I felt weak, and felt a lot of pain. There was very little motivation, and I was pretty much “willing” it (my slang for powering through something by using sheer will power). At the end of these 30 days, I didn’t want to do go through this anymore.

Revisiting Goals:

Instead, I returned to the drawing board, and started defining specifically, how I wanted to feel while I would be doing a plank: how I’d feel at the end of the 1st minute, 2nd minute, 3rd minute, 4th minute, 5th minute, and how I’d feel doing this as a part of my everyday morning routing. I was visualising doing a sturdy, and solid plank quite comfortably, and robustly, with a lot of reserve in the tank. This workout would ideally serve as a nice warm-up to fire-up my systems for an awesome day ahead. I went deeper into great amounts of detail about the optimal plank experience, which I’m not going to bore you with in this article.

This time, it was not about proving anything to anybody, partly because I knew that it was inevitable that I would achieve my 5 minute plank, may be not within 30 days, but at some point of time. This time, it was not about beating the challenge, but about ‘enjoying’ the plank, and incorporating it as a productive sub-component of morning routine.

The Path:

And so began my path towards a fullfilling experience, an experience that continues until this day. I wasn’t expecting this to turn out to be such a special experience. And therefore, I didn’t keep any precise recordings of my performance. However, what I can surely say is that, I did a plank EVERY single day. And every next day, the plank was either longer, or at least as long as the previous day.

I started again this time at the 45 second mark, with which I was perfectly comfortable with. From then onwards, I’d like to give you a rough description of my performance over a specific time-line as seen below:

• After 2 months – 01:10 plank (comfortably).
• After 4 months – 01:30 plank (comfortably).
• After 6 months – 01:45 plank (comfortably).
• After 12 months – 02:15 plank (comfortably).
• After 18 months – 02:45 plank (not so comfortable anymore).
• After 19 months – 03:30 plank (not so comfortable anymore).
• After 19.5 months – 03:45 plank (not so comfortable anymore).
• After 20 months – 04:10 plank (not so comfortable anymore).
• After 21 months – 04:45 plank (not so comfortable anymore).
• After 21.5 months – 05:05 plank (not so comfortable anymore).

The Tipping Point:

It is easy to see that, to get from a 00:45 plank to a 03:30 plank, it took 19 months, and to get from 03:30 plank to a 05:05 plank, it took just 2.5 months. Around the 19 months’ mark, there occured a tipping point, beyond which exponential growth occured.

The Exponential Growth:

The exponentail growth that occured had a particular characteristic: the experience didn’t get easier as opposed to my goal of achieving the plank in a ‘comfortable manner’. In fact, it was as hard as ever, especially beyond the 04:00 mark. Instead, it was my threshold to pain, and my overall endurance that improved significantly beyond the tipping point. The exponential growth experienced with my plank times has had a charmingly clear impact on my general performance, and fitness levels in a whole host of other activites, be it running, or calesthenics, or studying new subjects.

Where I stand now:

I recently recorded my personal best 5 Km run, and am steadily improving my fitness levels, and training routines. I’m as efficient as ever with my learning, and creativity.

At the time of writing this article, I’m doing a daily plank of 06:20 (minutes:seconds), which is by no means comfortable. But guess what: the first five minutes (05:00) of the 06:20 plank are now within my ‘comfortable’ range. Yes, I took my time, but boy am I glad I took this path instead of ‘beating an arbitrary challenge’.

As I narrated this story to my friend after nearly 2 years, he had almost forgotten about it, and didn’t think I was pursuing the plank seriously in the mean time. He, and I both laughed about it, and appreciated the marvelous effects of consistent effort.

Nothing worthwhile is easy, but if we are just patient, and consistent with our efforts, there are indeed relatively less intensive ways of achieving complicated, difficult targets. This story is just an example of that, and experiences like these make me feel thankful, and appreciate the life that I’m able to ‘live’.

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