Who is the woman behind the world record for the longest plank hold?

The amount of time you spend thinking about Guinness World Records seems to drop significantly the older you get, but every now and then a new World Record will pop up that is such a feat of athletic endurance that you have to stand up and take note. The World Record for Longest Time in an Abdominal Plank Position by a female is one just like this.

The World Record holder for the female title is a woman named Dana Glowacka and she held a plank for a whopping 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 55 seconds!

Achieving the record at the 1st International Plank Training Conference back in May 2019, Dana has captured the minds of people since as we all struggle to understand how we can turn our own torturous 1-minute plank holds into more than four hours of it.

Ultra planker Dana took to Instagram after her victory to share how it felt to achieve such a good result: "I’m so grateful," she wrote, "Truly, if you put the whole of you in what you believe, you gonna make it!"

WHO IS DANA GLOWACKA

Dana is Canadian and lives in Montreal. She’s passionately vegan and is also a yoga teacher. Being a yoga teacher helped her become an ultra planker with the practice allowing her to hone her planking skills and maintain form. Her Instagram is a collection of her training methods, diet and of course, her planking in interesting places.

Dana is also a mum. She has a son, and it was him encouraging her that spurred her on to set a record after she placed second in the International World Cup Plank Challenge in Beijing back in 2016. Her personal best in 2016 was around 2 hours, meaning she doubled her PB for the World Record! Before Dana’s World Record attempt, her last PB for planking was 4hr and 1min, which means she beat her personal best by 19 minutes!

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HOW DID SHE DO IT?

As you can see from her upper body muscles, Dana was very well prepared. She didn’t become an ultra planker overnight, in fact it took years of practice and a gruelling training schedule. Her trainer is George Hood, the ex-marine who is currently the male holder of the longest plank World Record. After setting her sights on the World Record goal, she contacted him and he coached her in methods he himself used. Dana says the record happened after "long training sets each day, with a vision to be the best I can and make my son proud".

During the record-setting session itself, you can watch below for yourself how she did it. Mixing up holds from forearms to high planks helps ease muscles, and she could also listen to music and check her phone throughout. Of course, the encouragement from friends and family who went along to support her was the extra special sauce that helped her get there.