the plank: facing my fitness fear

I HATE the plank. I hate it with every fibre of my being and every muscle in my body. It HURTS and it SUCKS. However, I am led to believe that it is fantastic for your core strength, which is in turn good for your whole body. The plank hates me as much as I hate it, and and the moment I can only do it for about 20 seconds before I wish I was dead. My form is also pretty bad, so I’m going to nee to make sure I sort that out. One of the most important things with exercise is making sure it doesn’t do more harm than good.

Despite hating it the most, I do want to befriend the plank. I want to know my enemy. Having a strong core and sick abs is also a motivation, of course. Plus, one of the things on my 101 things list is to do a two minute plank. I better start at that now if I’m going to be able to do it for two minutes within 1001 days.

To reach my impossible goal of a two-minute plank I am going to do a plank challenge. I’ve tried one before, but it was way too hard. Beginner level just doesn’t cut it. I need some kind of pre-beginner plan. So I took to Pinterest and went looking for a plan that builds up a bit more slowly. I found the one below that gets you up to a minute in 14 days, which I think should be possible. Then I can move onto a harder plan to get to the two minute goal.

Here’s the plan:

Image and plan from http://www.happinessishomemade.net/

 

Starting at 15 seconds seems realistic. 15 seconds is nothing (unless you’re doing a plank of course, then it feels like forever). Being able to do a minute in two weeks still seems insurmountable, but going up in five second increments makes it seem a bit more doable. I’m half dreading it, half looking forward to it. Mostly, I’m looking forward to the feeling of having accomplished something. Of course, I’ll need to carry on doing it so I don’t go back to HATING the plank, but I feel that when I can do it for a respectable amount of time I’ll feel more motivated to keep it up. At the moment I’m bad at it, and I hate being bad at stuff.

I shall let you know how I get on in two weeks time!