If a physical therapist or an exercise instructor has ever asked you to hold a position for “just ten more seconds,” you know how long ten seconds can feel. The clock seems to stop. Your arms start to argue with you.
Now picture five hours.
That is how long DonnaJean Wilde held a plank on October 6, at the opening ceremonies of the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah. (For anyone lucky enough to have avoided them, a plank means holding your body straight as a board, resting only on your forearms and toes.) She started at 3:03 p.m. and finished at 8:03 p.m., while judges took turns watching her in hourly shifts.
Wilde is 61, a retired teacher and a grandmother of 12. She already held the Guinness World Records title for the longest plank by a woman: 4 hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds. She set it in March 2024 in Magrath, Alberta, the Canadian town where she taught for many years. Guinness has received her application for the new five-hour mark and will review the evidence before it makes anything official.
How Does Someone Start Planking for Hours?
It started with a fall. More than a decade ago, Wilde broke her wrist. With a cast on, she could not run or lift weights, according to Guinness. A plank, it turned out, was something she could still do.
At first she could hold it for only a minute or so. She kept at it after the cast came off, and her time kept growing. Eventually her family pointed out that most people do not get down on the floor just to plank. They suggested she go after a record, she told NPR.
She also found ways to put the time to use. Wilde types on her laptop while propped up on her elbows.
“I completed a whole master’s degree while I was planking, wrote all my papers,” she told NPR. “And I actually wrote a book.”
Her training for Utah included a little extra weight: her 3-year-old granddaughter, lying on her back.
What Got Her Through the Last Stretch?
The hardest part came near the end.
“When I got to four hours and 30 minutes, I really did hit a wall,” Wilde told NPR.
She told ABC News that she was not sure she could finish and thought about quitting. At one point she told her husband, Randy, “I’m done. I’m going down.”
The room would not hear of it. Kyle Case, the chief executive officer of the Huntsman World Senior Games, was on the microphone. He got the whole crowd cheering for her.
“They got me through the last 10 minutes,” she said.
Even the judges joined in. “Some of them would come right down to me: ‘Go, DonnaJean, go! You’re doing great!’” she said.
Wilde had told the Games six months earlier that she wanted to break her record there, according to KSL. Organizers decided to pair the attempt with the opening ceremonies. Case was thrilled with how it turned out.
“The crowd there and the energy and everybody cheering was just fantastic,” he said.
By the next day, a video of the moment she reached five hours had drawn more than 4 million views on social media.
What Comes Next?
Not much rest, apparently. The morning after her plank, she ran a 3,000-meter race.
She also has her eye on her other Guinness mark, 1,575 pushups in an hour. She hopes to do at least 1,600. If Guinness approves the five-hour plank, it will be her third world record title.
Case said that efforts like hers are the whole point of the Games, which feature athletes 50 and older.
“It’s recognizing where you’re at right now and that you don’t have to stop; you can continue to do the things that you do,” he said.
As a teacher, Wilde spent years encouraging people to find something they love and then keep repeating it. Her own five hours began with a minute or so on the floor and a cast on her wrist. Whatever your version of that first minute is, it counts.
