Ten Lessons A 30-day Plank Challenge Taught Me

I’m an ectomorph who has struggled with gaining healthy weight all her life, so in 2019 I decided to make a conscious effort to change this fact. As part of this resolution, I joined a health and fitness WhatsApp group.

This is easily the best decision of 2019 because the administrator (my friend Felicity) made us each share our goals and expectations — and held us to them ruthlessly.

A year later, in February 2020, Moses (Felicity’s personal fitness trainer) joined our platform and this took things to another level, because he put all of us on a 30-day plank challenge in March.

I missed the decision for us to participate but caught the videos of my sisters-in-fitness performing planks. “That’s not difficult,” I told myself. “A 30-second plank? Phsst. I can do a 1 minute plank easy-peezy.”

And I did and recorded it. This led to Moses telling me that my form was ridiculously poor and I had to do it again.

After quietly eating my slice of humble pie, I started the 30-day plank challenge the following day and here are ten lessons I learnt from it.

1. Stubbornness is a super power: I always describe myself as “above-average stubborn” for people who don’t know me well enough. And I had to draw deep from this well to complete this challenge. Day 9 (when I was to do a 1 minute 30 second plank), was when I realized that, if I wanted this to work, I needed to push beyond the ache in my arms and the ringing in my ears. When I surmounted that challenge, I realized I had plateaued at 2 mins 45 seconds. I needed to progress to 3 minutes but I was stuck. For 2 or three days, that was my peak; until I reminded myself that I hadn’t backed down from any challenge life had thrown at me yet so why was I letting these planks defeat me? (I also realized the motivational surge one gets from cussing out one’s fitness trainer…but that’s a story for another day.)

2. You can do…you really can do it: I’ve already mentioned that I plateaued at 2 minutes 30 seconds but was finally able to push through to 3 minutes. Then I was stuck at 3 minutes for a couple of days. Then I reminded myself that “Look Jenny, you’ve done a 1 minute plank…you’ve done 2 minutes…you’ve done 3 minutes…what stops you from hitting 4 or 5 minutes?”

3. The voices in your head…..are your voices. What are you telling yourself?

I would hit my target and then plateau for days without shifting. Honestly, it was frustrating. And then I remembered a theory my sister shared with me — it was about the Upper Limit Problem or ULP. Basically, it’s a limit you put on yourself concerning your own abilities and when you feel you are nearing or breaching that internal limit you start to do things that self-sabotage yourself. So I had to ask myself — why was I limiting myself at 3 minutes? Why did I think I couldn’t go beyond this? Why did I think my core wasn’t strong enough to handle it? Once I worked through my self-sabotaging efforts, I was able to push beyond the 3 minute mark.

4. Celebrate every small victory :

As you may have noticed, I would throw a little party in my head when I hit a target successfully. The party was in my head because my body couldn’t move afterwards. No matter how small the milestone was, I learnt how to celebrate it.

A 30-second plank? Yes!

A 1-minute plank? Whoo-hoo!

2 minutes? Giirrrrll…..you are killing it!

At 3 minutes….you didn’t come to play at all!

In essence, although my sisters-in-fitness would congratulate every milestone, I learnt how to be my own hype woman.

5. Push. Keep pushing. Then push again:

Planks are of the devil. Yes, I said it. They are devilish and demonic and I hate them.

But midway through, I noticed that I loved how firm my core was becoming and how defined my abs were becoming. Seeing the results made me want to keep pushing through the challenge. And that’s exactly what I did — push through the dripping sweat and aching arms and the clenching of my stomach muscles.

6. There is a point where you want to give up. Don’t.

Small steps in the right direction lead to big results eventually. This I know, this I believe. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to give up midway in spite of my gains. “But why?” You ask. Because I was tired. At a point, adulting was kicking my butt left, right and center and although exercise made me feel better, I couldn’t bring myself to change into my gear, roll out my mat and get to it. It was a physical lethargy that I found hard to shake. I wanted to revert to factory settings and throw in the towel; then I saw a message from one of the ladies on the platform encouraging us to not give up when we had come so far. And that reminder gave me the push I needed to get back in the saddle.

7. There is light at the end of the tunnel

Around day 20 of the challenge was when I saw that …my goodness, I’m going to make it. This challenge will not defeat me. Mind you, by this point I had pegged my personal target at a 4 minute plank instead of the 5-minute target. Seeing that I was at the last lap made me internally rejoice that I hadn’t given up and I was seeing results : my core was becoming firmer and I could see the bikini-worthy abs peeking through.

8. Be patient with yourself : trust God, trust the process, trust yourself

Remember when I said planks are from the devil? That’s because they are. But they are a great metaphor for learning how to work consistently through the challenges and messiness of life. I learnt how to trust my own strength, to keep the end-goal in sight, to lean on my support system and to push through my own fears.

9. Keep working at it every single day: There was a weekend I remember distinctly. I did my planks on Friday, then skipped Saturday and did a set on Sunday. That weekend I learnt why planks are not to be toyed with. The form I lost over a 24 hour period was insane. I dipped from something like 3 minutes to 1 minute 45 seconds. And that’s a generous assumption. It was annoying but also, entirely my own fault. Moses chewed me out for at least 30 minutes that Sunday and it took me five days of consistent planking to recover the form I carelessly lost.

10. Team work makes the dream work: I would never have been able to achieve my target of 4 minutes without my crew of sisters encouraging me every step of the way. Even when I slipped, they gave me the encouragement to get back up and try again. This taught me…an introverted extrovert…that it’s fine to enjoy my own space, but this journey called ‘life’ is also best enjoyed in the company of like-minded souls.

And eventually on the 16th of April, 2020, this happened:

Mission accomplished.