Grandmother Holds Plank Longer Than Most Family Gatherings
A 61-year-old grandmother of 12 held an abdominal plank for five hours at the World Senior Games. The retired teacher demolished her own previous record while ordinary gym-goers felt tired just reading about it.
DonnaJean Wilde, a 61-year-old grandmother of 12, spent five hours holding an abdominal plank, which is longer than many people can remain cheerful at a family gathering involving 12 grandchildren.
The retired school teacher from Alberta, Canada, set the new world record at the World Senior Games in Utah on October 6, 2026. With her body held rigid above the floor, Wilde crossed the five-hour mark as spectators and officials watched, presumably having exhausted every possible way of saying, “Keep going.”
Her performance also attracted astonishment on social media. This was understandable: holding a standard plank for just 60 seconds is enough to leave many ordinary gym-goers trembling, reconsidering their choices and becoming unusually interested in exercises that can be done sitting down.
Wilde, a mother of five as well as a grandmother of 12, was not edging past an unfamiliar rival. She was breaking her own previous world record of four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds, set in 2024. Her latest effort added nearly half an hour to that mark, turning what was already an extraordinary record into something that sounds like a clerical error.
Her planking career began not with a grand athletic plan but with a broken arm. In 2013, Wilde was unable to run or do her usual cardio exercises while wearing a heavy cast. At the same time, her children were challenging one another to a family plank-off.
Unable to join in with more traditional exercise, she turned to core workouts and discovered that she had a remarkable aptitude for remaining perfectly still in a position most people would describe as an emergency. What began as a practical way to stay active during her recovery became a passion.
Thirteen years later, that family challenge had carried her all the way to the World Senior Games and another world record. After five uninterrupted hours, Wilde ended the plank with her old mark thoroughly demolished and a new benchmark in place.
No further attempt was announced in the supplied account. For now, the record stands at five hours, leaving the rest of the fitness world free to begin with a more manageable target, such as finishing this sentence without needing a lie-down.
Original story
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