How is it possible for a red-blooded human being to hold a plank for 8 HOURS?? Please enlighten me..

[pearblossom]

@resemblethatremark Also because once you’re past 30 or 35 and you’ve been training most or all of your adult life for distance running, recording successive 100 mile training weeks with relatively lower intensity efforts is actually safer for the body than the 50 mile weeks with lots of miles of high intensity tempos, intervals, or particularly reps and maybe even full on sprint reps if training for a half mile or mile like people do earlier in adulthood (in college; I do wish for 25-30 yo people did mile though, I wanna PR again )

 

[dawn16]

@resemblethatremark Not true Kaci Licktieg won the western states 100 mile at 29 in 2016.

https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/profiles-people/how-kaci-lickteig-won-western-states/

 

[staygold]

@sarangapani Nah it's just training and mental strength. I never showed any natural running ability but built up to ultras until a serious injury curtailed that particular passion.

 

[sarangapani]

@staygold Maybe I’m extrapolating too much from my own experience.

I always had lower leg issues with running. Achilles tendonitis, shin splints, inflamed ankle ligaments. Never managed to run more than 70km/week for years. Visited several doctors, physiotherapists, running trainers. I was never overweight, paid attention to nutrition and recovery. Then at the ripe age of 29 I was diagnosed with a hip impingement and hip cartilage damage, got surgery and had to give up running forever. It’s unclear whether the hip impingement was the root cause of all my previous problems.

I know too many people with similar stories.

 

[beaud20]

@sarangapani Dated a D1 5k specialist.

She ran 100 - 120 mile weeks year round.

 

[inharmswayus]

@tresmantra At a certain point its not so much training as it is having the capacity to ignore pain and push yourself, very often to an unhealthy degree.

 

[salviaj]

@inharmswayus Which is done through training.

 

[saved411]

@salviaj That kind of Training is just as much mental as it is physical, if not more so

 

[inharmswayus]

@saved411 There is definitely a crazy amount of training, mental and physical that go into something like running a 200 mile race, or trying to set the FKT on something like the AZT, which requires ~15 days of running 18+ hours a day.

But the people who do those sorts of events have generally been the first to tell me, there is no way to be fully prepped for them, running anywhere near that level on a regular basis does more harm than good. Even if you run a trail marathon or ultra marathon every day, you are still tripling that daily time to put in an AZT FKT attempt, close to quadrupling it on a 200 miler.

It comes down to a willingness to keep pushing even when your organs are literally starting to shut down. Sure, you need to be super fit, and have the experience to know what you can survive, but there still needs to be the willingness to push yourself well beyond what is healthy.

 

[inharmswayus]

@salviaj You can improve that ability through training, but at a certain point you simply can not fully prep yourself for some things and have to rely on a willingness to see yourself hospitalized to finish out your goal.

The AZT FKT is a good example of that.

People like Candice Burt, considered the mother of 200 mile trail races, who has done 200 50k runs in 200 days, do it, wound up in the hospital for a few days with multiple organ failure after successfully running ~15 days, 18 hours a day. Obviously, you have to train and train hard, but people like her say all the time there is no way to ever be 100% prepared for putting your body through that without doing more harm than good. You just have to go do it and bail if your body starts coming apart too early.

 

[kasadit]

@werby I go to the Guinness World Records website.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.co...ecord-smashed-with-staggering-new-time-674245

 

[whitetiger11]

@kasadit Cheers, was looking for this, because I remembered him being an Aussie, not a Chinese policeman

Daniel Scali (Australia) has broken the record for the longest time in the abdominal plank position (male) with an unbelievable time of 9 hours 30 minutes and 1 second

 

[puasa1]

@werby You can see a video of the world record so you can see it is normal technique:

In my opinion a really long plank is more of a sign of high pain tolerance and specifically practicing for it. As others have said there isn't an athletic benefit for almost any sport. Maybe there is some benefit for an iron man or ultra marathoner.

 

[iwant2giveup]

@puasa1 It may not have as much of an athletic benefit compared to other exercises but it's definitely good for improving your body's ability to regulate blood pressure which is an important health benefit

 

[anonyorthodox]

@werby By being overly comfortable with being bored

 

[ianf19]

@anonyorthodox haha I like this answer. I love planking for core work but I do it with plates on my back for shorter time and much more difficult resistance. But when planking, when I get towards a single minute I'm just ready for it to be over so I can do something more fun.

 

[sun1900]

@werby My company once did a one week plank challenge where we do planks for 7 days to see who has the highest total accumulated duration.

I went from 2mins on my first day to 7 minutes and 10sec on my last...

I'm not even fit, but I'd been to the gym for a year and a half a few years prior.

 

[mrsc49017]

@werby One of the fitness categories for the army is a plank, max being 3min 30sec. About 1 out of 10 can max it, and they are just of average fitness.

 

[walkingwithchrist]

@werby Surprising thing is that he could hold his pee for 8 HOURS.

 

[coffeemom]

@walkingwithchrist This is the real mystery to me. Did he wear a diaper? Just not drink anything?