How Planking Everyday Will Change Our Life
The One-Minute Exercise That Makes Us Feel Like Superman for the Rest of the Day
It all started when I stumbled upon a Youtube video about the longest plank Guinness World Record female holder (Dana Glowacka). She held it for 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 55 seconds.
Planking is boring, there’s no movement.
But the setup is simple. You just need a yoga mat, music, timer, and perhaps a towel placed under your elbow that catches the sweat if you are in for the long haul. That’s also all Ms. Glowacka had for that 4 hours.
Fascinated by this exercise I have set to do a plank every day. Today, after just 10 days of practicing, I’ve achieved a new record of 3 minutes and 14 seconds.
This is an article about why and how to plank every day and how I’ve changed because of this. Guess what, I feel like a superwoman.
Why do I plank?
If you’ve been following my journey, you’d know that I just quit my job, moved to a seaside town during the pandemic and now I’m starting my own business (along with 3 other jobs).
It’s been 5 months and every day was a combination of happiness, bliss, struggle, and anxiety. Out are the routines and auto-pilot nine-to-five, in are the creativity, self-initiative, and new discoveries.
As an entrepreneur, I have to constantly create a world for myself to flourish. If I don’t network, I won’t get clients; if I don’t find ways to get inspired, my Medium articles won’t sell.
Although I said I don’t like having a morning routine, I like to have a few things that help me get out of my bed in the most positive mood. It’s about setting the right trajectory, like a pilot.
So here are the three things that I almost always do now: masturbation (Yep, read here!), meditation, and planking.
I’d say the combination of these three has made me a superwoman. But let’s look at planking more specifically today.
Benefits of planking
As I mentioned above, the setup is simple and the duration is short (at least at first). It’s perfect for people who want to get back into the game of fitness.
It’s a classic isometric/bodyweight exercise — which is when we create muscle tension without moving the surrounding joints (another classic one would be squads).
The benefit of isometric exercises, especially planks, is that it trains multiple muscle groups at once. It also improves muscle endurance and many more other positive benefits.
Planking also improves patience, postures, and anxiety. According to this article, it seems to have all-rounded benefits.
How I do it?
Except for yoga, which we breathe into the muscle we’re trying to train, most athletes will tell you that it’s better if we can forget about the body and focus on the whole experience. The bigger picture is important.
Some people pay for expensive gym classes precisely because of that. I used to go to this trendy spinning class in London where the light is switched off. Like Ariana Grande’s Side To Side music video, laser light beaming along with mood-boosting clubbing music. The spotlight is on the instructor, and that 45-minute is fantastic, I feel like clubbing on a bike.
To create the optimal planking ambiance, my setup is simple. The night before I sleep, I make sure there is no clutter on the floor. In the morning, after my meditation, I roll out of bed and my yoga mat is just under it.
Then I roll it out, switch on a dimmed lamp (I am still half asleep), and then I put on the same music every day. For me, it’s important that the music stays the same.
I chose the sexy Korean girl band Black Pink’s Lovesick Girls. Yep, it’s precisely because I’m also an Asian woman.
When I plank I visualize myself dancing with them, as hot, as chic, as badass.
Then the rest is history. I started the timer on my Fitbit and hit play on Spotify. Although planking is primarily a core exercise, I find that when I put all my focus on the music and on my shoulder blades, I can last much longer.
How do I feel?
As I said up front, I feel like a superwoman.
I like the fact that I turn up on the mat every day. Because it’s such a simple thing to do and it doesn’t take long, I feel like it’s a much easier commitment (and I’m bad at commitment…).
There are ups and downs. Sometimes I managed a 2-minute plank the day before, then gave up after 30 seconds the next day. I can’t explain why, but I decide to find the experience curious and interesting rather than feeling defeated.
I practice forgiveness and cultivate patience.
I like the feeling of making progress, I can see improvements happening. My core, my strength, my posture, and how it sets me in a good mood for the day.
Whilst planking involves no movement, it has changed my metabolism. So recently, immediately after the plank I also add a 30-minute exercise. Yoga, barre, whatever tickles my fancy on Youtube.
It used to be a pain to even work out for 10 minutes, but now it becomes easy.
I’ll write about my experience again in a month’s time, like a progress report. This is a holistic entrepreneur journey. Through exercise, I discover and reinvent myself. It’s a blessing to be able to dedicate time to self-development, care, and training.
A holistic entrepreneur is not just about making innovation, getting investment, and scaling the business. In this part, a lot of people are better than me, and I’m learning every day from my fellow entrepreneurs.
But it’s also about re-evaluating the value of our time, how an imbalanced focus on making money could cost us more in a long run. I also question how to build a long-term sustainable business that actually keeps us busy and feeling fulfilled on a 100-year lifespan basis.
I also question how we can continue to give to our friends, family, and people in need. I’m talking about feeling abundant, in excess and full of compassion.
You might ask how can planking lead to all the above, I argue that being a holistic entrepreneur means everything we allow to include in our lives, something as short as a minute plank, is an important pillar to the architecture of life design.
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