DonnaJean Wilde held an abdominal plank for five hours straight at the World Senior Games in Utah, setting a new world record and obliterating her own previous mark.
Wilde, 61, is a retired school teacher, mother of five and grandmother of 12 from Alberta, Canada. Her prior record stood at four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds, set in 2024. In Utah, she beat it by nearly half an hour.
Most people struggle to hold a plank for 60 seconds. Wilde held hers for 18,000.
She didn’t come up through competitive fitness. Wilde discovered her ability in 2013, after breaking her arm. Stuck in a cast and unable to run, she turned to core work instead of cardio after her kids challenged each other to a family plank-off.
The injury recovery habit stuck. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her family pushed her to see how long she could actually hold a plank. She hit two hours without breaking a sweat.
In 2023 she started training specifically to break world records, adding hundreds of daily push-ups, weight training, running and dead hangs to her routine on top of the planking itself.
The plank isn’t her only record. In 2024, Wilde set the female world record for most push-ups in 60 minutes, completing 1,575 reps.
Her five-hour plank has drawn a wave of praise online. One commenter on her Instagram called her an inspiration. Another wrote, “This is actually the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Wilde isn’t done. She says her next goal is at least 1,600 push-ups in an hour, aiming to break her own record again.
