What's the Point of Chasing a Plank PR?

"It's just what it looks like: I time my planks then file them away, determined to last a little longer tomorrow. And sometimes I do, for several days in a row, then one day I'll collapse nearly a minute short of my personal best. I'll pound the mat like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes, then I'll get myself together - you've got to stay cool at Equinox - and move on with my day."

"That latter point about a two-minute limit is according to a variety of exercise specialists, including Eric L'Italien, a physical therapist with Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Center. He told Harvard Health: "Two minutes [of planking] is often considered the maximum, and you don't get much more benefit after that." And in a 2015 Men's Health article about extreme planking, veteran strength coach Dan John said, "It's just a plank. More is not better.""

"Physical therapists point out that for (roughly) the first two minutes of a plank, you're training strength and motor control. You recruit the muscles of your deep core, get the glutes and spinal stabilizers involved, then simply hang out. It hurts, but leads to plank-specific strength benefits; you'll bolster your trunk muscles, hip flexors, glutes and even shoulders. Once two minutes is routinely within reach, you've strengthened the areas you need to -"

Timing planks and saving stopwatch screenshots tracks incremental improvement and tests mental resilience through repeated attempts. Exercise specialists often consider two minutes the practical maximum for plank duration, with limited additional benefit beyond that point. Planking trains strength and motor control in the first two minutes by recruiting deep core muscles, glutes, and spinal stabilizers, improving trunk stability and shoulders. Once two minutes becomes routine, core and stabilizer strength plateaus and benefits can be maintained by brief repeated holds or segmented intervals. Longer holds serve more as tests of mental endurance than sources of additional physical benefit.

Read at InsideHook