Lots of people like to do the plank exercise because this is an easy way to increase your core strength and develop your abs to some degree.
I do this exercise myself and can regularly maintain this position for about 5 minutes before my body is begging me to stop, but I know that many people can’t even do a plank for longer than about a minute.
So you can imagine just how hard it would be to hold this position for more than 8 hours, but that is exactly what one person has just done, smashing the previous world record in the process.
In a specially organised event that brought together two of the world’s best components of this exercise (George Hood from the USA and Mao Weidong from China), it was Weidong that lasted the longest with a staggering time of 8 hours and 1 minute.
Hood himself smashed the previous best time with a time of 7 hours, 40 minutes and 5 seconds, but Weidong kept going for another 20 minutes or so after Hood’s body had given up to set a new world record.
Mao Weidong admitted that he is required to do strength training as part of his job as a policeman, but this was still an incredible achievement because it obviously required superhuman levels of strength and willpower.
It was nice to see the sportsmanship and respect between the two competitors afterwards, and it will be interesting to see how long this new world record lasts. You just know that George Hood will be desperate to get his world record back, and there are others that will want to break this record as well.
I personally think that the world record will continue to be broken in years to come, but if nothing else, it should provide you with the motivation to attempt to do longer planks yourself because this is a great way to strengthen your core.
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