The Plank Position: Evil or Heavenly?

The Plank Position seems like the world’s most evil workout move.  Do you know the one I’m talking about?  It requires holding yourself in either in a push-up position or on your elbows with your belly off the floor.  It looks easy.  For me, the result is trembling like a scared bunny for a few painful seconds, and then collapsing (more accurately: belly-flopping) onto the sweat-soaked exercise mat.  The plank position seems like it was dreamed up specifically to make the un-fit feel even worse about themselves, probably by a secret society of personal trainers meeting in a bunker under the Arizona desert.

This is what a fit person looks like doing the plank pose; specifically, Kelly Loves Whales on Flickr

I know this because I tried the Boot Camp class at my gym today.  Normally I wouldn’t participate voluntarily in something that promises punishment, but a few of my friends love this class.  Also, Physical Education 101 requires that I try every class at my gym.   So I went, and it delivered the promised butt-kicking.  I was purple-faced after 15 minutes, but I finished it.

Doing Boot Camp is part of my goals to build up to 180 minutes of exercise each week and to start a running program that builds up to a 5k distance by the end of the December.  I picked 180 minutes because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans reported that 150 minutes or more of moderate-intensity exercise (like 3.0 speed on the treadmill) improves many health outcomes, including lowering the risk of heart disease and premature death.  I figured I’d hedge my bets and add a teeny bit more, hence the 180 number.

After combing over this website a bit more, it’s clear that more than 150 minutes—like the 200-300 range—is better for all health outcomes, including weight loss.  According to these guidelines, “many people need to do more than 300 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week to meet weight–control goals.”  Also, the data suggest that 210 minutes or more are needed to reduce the risk of breast and colon cancer, and don’t support 150 minutes being enough to reduce risk.  Plus, extra benefits to the heart are seen at 200+ minutes.  Fortunately, if these exercise minutes are “vigorous,” you only have to do half as many to achieve the same benefits.

The DHHS exercise guidelines give me some goals for the future and all, but the long-term benefits of exercise seem far away when I’m enduring things like the plank position.  Fortunately, after the gym today I read a good chunk of the first book I’m reading for Grown-Up University, The Courage to Start: A Guide to Running for Your Life by John “The Penguin” Bingham.

This author is, as he describes himself, an “adult-onset athlete” who transformed himself from overweight to a hard-core runner in his middle age.  Before this transformation, he writes about feeling trapped inside his own body; feeling more like a spectator in his life rather than a participant.  I think most of us overweight folks know what it’s like to feel like we’re stuck inside a Fat Suit and barely recognize ourselves.

Bingham talks about how he had to get over the idea that athletes were fundamentally different from him and had to look a certain way.  He argues that we have to give ourselves permission to be in the “athlete” club, no matter what we look like.

“I began to ask myself” he says, “not what I wanted my body to look like, but what I wanted my body to be able to do.” This is what I need to remember every single day throughout this project.  I should probably get that quote tattooed on my body somewhere visible, like maybe my forehead.  One thing I would like my body to do, for example, would be to hold a plank position without all the shaking and collapsing.  In order to get there, though, Bingham reminded me that I have to stop looking at exertion as evil; on the contrary, he claimed that he came to crave the sensation of expending effort during his transition to an “athlete.”  The purest form of effort, he claims, is right on the edge of comfort.  So, if I’m understanding him correctly, the plank position seems evil because it’s hard, but it’s that very sensation of effort that I should seek out.  It is the sensation of almost intolerable effort that will change my body and my health. I think I get it.  Today, that very moment before I belly-flopped was a clear indication that I have already become an athlete.