Be able to do a plank

“After a few rounds of rowing intervals, we moved to the floor and moved through not one, but six (!), different plank variations. The instructor told us to squeeze our glutes as tight as we could, and to try and shift some weight out of our arms and shoulders. So, I squeezed my butt and shifted my weight—and I had a total a-ha moment. Planking was instantly easier! If I hadn’t been slathered in sweat at the end of class, I would have hugged that instructor.”

“Excited as I was for my planking time to (hopefully) improve, I wasn’t even sure how long I’d be able to plank for that first day. My answer: 32 seconds. Twelve seconds longer than I had even planked in physical therapy, that seemed pretty good. Until I Google searched ‘average plank time for women,’ that is. I was a full minute below the average! I’d never been so below-average at something athletic in my life. [...] Every time I got into that plank position, time seemed to move at half-speed—and no amount of fidgeting or staring at the stopwatch on my phone passed the dreaded seconds any faster.”

“The first day, it seemed like an eternity, and I suffered for half of the time! The second day, I dreaded planking because the day before had been so rough, but I was fine and felt like I could keep going once I hit the two-minute mark (I didn’t keep going, though). The third day was a real planking struggle.”