You Don’t Find Your Will Power, You Create It — Plank Challenge Reflection

So why the plank challenge? Did it give me abs? No.. nothing was going to give me abs in a month. Is a 5 minute plank the best ab workout I can do? Still not at all.. It’s actually better to do 1–2 minute planks multiple times so you don’t put too much strain on your lower back while your ab muscles start to fatigue. Was I dared and too stubborn to say no? Nope — I did this all on my own volition. So why do it?

To prove to myself and to my brain THAT I CAN. To show myself and my brain that I’m capable of more than I think I am, that I can push my body further when my brain is telling me to stop.

See our brains are powerful things. The human brain is designed to protect our bodies from pain and injury which is great when we’re surviving in the wild but it hurts us when we’re trying to push our physical abilities and power through intense workouts.

When we feel uncomfortable while working out our brains are telling us to rest or stop — it sends a signal to the body that we’ve had enough but when we start to feel this our bodies have only endured a small fraction of the work we can really do. Some say it’s about 40% of the struggle we can take when our brain start telling us to shut it down.. I’m not much for statistics and numbers — most of them are made up anyway.

The numbers don’t matter, what matters is this beautiful thing that happens when you start to tell your brain the opposite. “Keep going”, “push on”, “one more minute”, “You got this”. This is what personal trainers do when leading you through intense workouts — they help you keep a “can do” mindset and once your brain buys in your body follows suit.

I was doing great with my plank challenge right up until about day 20, it was easy, no big deal. But holding the plank for 2 and a half minutes became very challenging and I had to start using my mind game tricks to get through it. These tricks work differently for everyone.. My friend Callie who did the challenge with me couldn’t look at the time remaining. She had to distract herself and wait for a time to go off. I was the opposite I actually needed to have the time in front of me so I could see it and I started talking myself through it the same way my trainer does when I’m struggling to complete my reps and each day as the time increased I kept coaching myself and fighting against that voice in my head that was telling my body to quit. Telling my knees to hit the floor..

Each day making it to the timer felt like a triumph and I wondered how I would make it longer the next time. It was about day 23 that I realized what this challenge was.. a mind game. If I continued to fight the voice in my brain telling me I needed to rest I would make it to the 5 minutes and that’s exactly what I did. Make no mistake.. 2 and a half minutes still wasn’t easy and neither was 3 minutes or 4 minutes.. I didn’t build up to a point were my body could just handle it… MY BODY WAS ALWAYS ABLE TO HANDLE IT, shaking, and dripping sweat, and contemplating how much I really wanted to do it.. I could handle it. I just needed my brain to believe it too.

The take away message here is our bodies are capable of so much more than our brains will let us believe — next time you are working out and your brain convinces you it’s time to take a break I dare you to challenge those thoughts and replace them with thoughts that encourage you to push for another minute, for 10 more reps, or just one more rep. Results?

Moving forward I don’t plan on doing many 5 minute planks, I’ve learned the optimal planking practice is about 1–2 minutes at a time and doing that 5–10 times a day so thats what I’ll be incorporating into my workouts but I will be taking the lesson I learned into all my workouts and remember that when I feel like I can’t keep pushing that I most certainly can and should keep pushing. Keep reaching higher.