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

[godsmilk]

@werby There is a difference between choosing not to do something and being unable to do something.

If you're not getting much benefit out of your planks after 3 minutes, the only reason to go longer is ego.

 

[3rdegreeblock]

@werby The main reason you don't see people plank for extended minutes is that the plank combines the most boring (for most) ab exercise, with probably the least return on time/effort investment.

Why would you?

 

[saved411]

@werby How about ultra marathons those people are inhuman

 

[inharmswayus]

@saved411 Courtney Dauwalter just won the Mount Blanc 100 miler in

 

[craftylady]

@inharmswayus I just did Tour du Mount Blanc. It's over 100 miles, more like 110, and it's ~36k feet of gain and probably similar descent. I did it in 10 days but without a heavy pack I can see 3 day but under 1 day is insane.

 

[jmgiven]

@inharmswayus Jim Walmsley won. Courtney was first female. Both set course records.

 

[bxny16]

@werby Human bodies adapt and specialize. There is a wide range of base ability range as well as a spectrum of possible adaptation and potential adaptation.

Specialized training, when paired with genetic advantages, and a higher than normal ability to build certain muscle structures, all for the goal of pushing that specific boundary, is a reality in every high end human endeavor.

 

[neobondjames]

@werby pretty sure Cher talked about doing a 15 3-5minute plank just like a few years ago. im sure athletes could do longer.

honestly that just sounds boring to me.

 

[gracesa88]

@neobondjames I think it’s mostly because most athletic training doesn’t have much crossover with doing an endurance plank

It’s like having a swimmer do a bench press or a soccer player do a bicep curl, I doubt they are much better than the average gym going population

 

[tresmantra]

@werby You train for it.

Same way people can run ultra marathons but the average American almost dies going from the parking lot into Walmart.

 

[sarangapani]

@tresmantra Ultra marathon runners are genetic freaks with an unnatural resistance against overuse injuries.

When I was still able to run I would have been soooo happy just to run 70km per week without injuries.

 

[saved411]

@sarangapani When I ran cross country in highschool I did a 70 mile week once and holy shit I swear it almost killed me

 

[resemblethatremark]

@sarangapani I would say it's just training. Endurance of muscles and ability to regenerate damage to tissue is adaptive. Ultra marathoners are exclusively +40 aged people because they have trained a lot to achieve such fitness.

 

[sarangapani]

@resemblethatremark I know a lot of people who struggle to run more than 60km or 70km per week without injuries. Shin splints, metatarsal bone stress fractures, achilles tendonitis, ITBS, patella tendonits … all that shit.

Running is a beautiful sport, but unfortunately it puts a lot of stress on the body. I honestly don’t know how our species ever managed to survive, considering that running and walking – apparently – was very important in our evolutionary past.

 

[bound4heaven]

@sarangapani Primarily because we didn't run 70 miles a week chasing dinner. We just had to have a sliiigghhhtly higher than average speed than our prey and the ability to track them.

 

[savvaspro]

@bound4heaven I don't think that's true. How many wild animals are humans faster than?

What gave us an advantage was our endurance and ability to sweat. Staying after the prey until it literally couldn't go any farther due to exhaustion and overheating. How many miles a week it was, I don't know but it was an endurance game, not speed.

 

[bound4heaven]

@savvaspro An endurance game is literally an average speed game lol.

If your prey can maintain a higher average speed than you over both long and short distances it evades you. The principle of persistence hunting is maintaining a higher speed than your prey on average so that you push it to exhaustion over a long distance. Over medium to long distances, human walking speed outpaces nearly everything else.

In the situations humans evolved in, being bipedal and able to sweat means humans were able to maintain higher average speeds over long distances which caused prey to suffer heat exhaustion if they tried to maintain it. But humans didn't just run the whole way, evidence suggests it was walking with intermittent running.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248422001075

 

[resemblethatremark]

@sarangapani The thing is that we all except farmers grew up in sedetary environments. Kids used to be super active and on their feet helping around houses. It is very important to stress child's body for it to be better at it as adult I assume.

When I had insane course in army, we for 3 months before had to have 15k daily steps.

 

[daydreamerr]

@sarangapani As long as your form is good you just have to do the bulk of your training in zone 2 and you'll be fine. Start with a training load you can easily do without injury or soreness in a week and increase by 15% every 3 weeks and you'll probably cap out from the time commitment instead of injury. Lots of people get injured running because their form is bad, they're impatient to move on to bigger distances, or they're using running to replace therapy and start ignoring the feedback they're getting from their body.

 

[sarangapani]

@daydreamerr Never worked for me, nor for my sisters or my girlfriend.