Try holding a plank right now. Most people’s arms start shaking before the one-minute mark.
DonnaJean Wilde held one for five hours.
The 61-year-old retired teacher from Magrath, Alta., got into position at 3:03 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah. She didn’t come out of it until 8:03 p.m., while judges rotated in and out in shifts to watch her.
Organizers clocked her at five hours and seven seconds. That’s nearly half an hour longer than the women’s world record.
The record she beat was her own.
Wait, didn’t she already do this?
If her name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s been here before.
In March 2024, Wilde set the Guinness World Record for the longest plank by a woman: 4 hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds. She did it in the theatre at Magrath High School, where she’d taught and served as vice principal. It made headlines around the world.
This is a new attempt, and a new mark.
Guinness has received the application and is reviewing the evidence before it makes the five-hour plank official.
Why this is so hard at 61
A plank looks simple. You hold your body straight, propped on your forearms and toes. That’s it.
But after about 30, adults start losing muscle. Research summarized by Harvard Health puts it at roughly 3 to 8 per cent of muscle mass every decade for people who don’t actively train, and the loss speeds up after 60.
By 61, Wilde is three decades into that decline. She’s outlasting women half her age anyway.
A long plank isn’t only about strength. Your shoulders burn, your elbows ache from carrying your weight, and your core works the entire time with no rest. After a while, it becomes a test of how much discomfort you can tolerate, and for how long.
Older athletes have done it before. When the men’s record was set in 2020, it belonged to George Hood of Illinois. He was 62.
Five hours, for perspective
That’s two and a half NHL games, start to finish.
It’s a full workday, minus lunch.
If you can hold a plank for a minute, you’d need to do it 300 times in a row, with no breaks, to match her.
For the record books, the longest plank by a man is 9 hours, 38 minutes and 47 seconds, set by Josef Šálek of the Czech Republic in 2023. Wilde is now more than halfway there.
She started planking because she couldn’t run
Wilde didn’t set out to be a world-class planker.
In 2013, she broke her arm. With it in a sling, she couldn’t run. But she could still hold a plank.
She kept at it. By 2023, she was training seriously for records, mixing long planks with running, weights and push-ups.
In the last month before Utah, she was reportedly getting up around 2 a.m. to train.
She’s spent so much time in the position that in 2025, she published a book called From Minutes to Hours: I Wrote This Book While Planking.
Her third world record
The 2024 plank wasn’t her only record. A few months later, she did 1,575 push-ups in one hour, the most ever by a woman.
If Guinness approves the five-hour plank, it’ll be her third world record.
She wanted to know if she could do five
Wilde told ABC News she’d always wondered whether she could have reached five hours the first time.
Six months before the games, she contacted organizers to ask if she could try during the opening ceremonies, according to Huntsman World Senior Games CEO Kyle Case.
It hurt. After her first record, she told Guinness the first two hours went quickly, the next two were much harder, and her elbows hurt badly. This time, the last few minutes were the worst. She credited the crowd with pulling her through.
She cleared five hours by seven seconds.
What counts as a real plank?
For a Guinness record, form matters. The body has to stay straight and supported on the forearms and toes. Letting the hips sag or shifting into a resting position can end an attempt.
A few online critics questioned her form after watching clips. Judges watched her throughout, and Guinness will make its own call after reviewing the evidence.
The internet tried it, too
A video of the moment she hit five hours has passed 4 million views.
Plenty of people watched it, got down on the floor to try, and gave up in under a minute. Most of the reaction has been some version of disbelief.
From a small southern Alberta town
Magrath is a town of about 2,500 people, roughly half an hour southwest of Lethbridge.
Wilde spent much of her career teaching there. She’s a mother of five and grandmother of 12, and she’s now a familiar face at the Huntsman World Senior Games, which bring together athletes 50 and older from around the world.
Case said what she did is “the whole point” of the games.
She’s beaten her own record once. She may not be done.
Sources
Longest time in an abdominal plank position (female), Guinness World Records
Longest time in an abdominal plank position (male), Guinness World Records
Huntsman World Senior Games
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