Planking

                For 7 Weeks Strait

                                               (Kind Of)

               

           So I know what you are thinking. You planked for 7 WEEKS straight!?! Well, not really. I planked every day or, well, almost every day on some days. I did plank and I did benefit from it. I was 4th in our plank challenge of 14 people, at 7 minutes 30 seconds. My goal was to make the top three, but I couldn’t reach that mark. I gained a lot and proved to myself that I am strong. That battle was all about mental strength, and that’s what I showed. I’ll tell you how you can do that too, with anything really.

                           

So we first started this challenge in late October, when most of us could barely last 2 minutes. I had done multiple planks before this challenge, so I was ready. We began this challenge going for 30 seconds each class. Then we started moving up by 15 seconds each week. You’d think that that would be a lot of time, but it really was easy when you do it. The compound effect of planking each day piled up.

For the next daily habit, I am challenging myself to do 1 minute of basketball but every day the amount of time doubles. This may not seem like a lot, but I’ll be doing 64 minutes in a week. That will get me back in playing shape because I’ll be starting my new AAU season in a month. Getting back to the Language Arts challenge, I noticed that I was really not that consistent. I would either not mark down the day, or just not do the plank, but I was doing a CrossFit workout for 1 hour every week, so that likely helped.

I noticed how much easier planking is. I probably couldn’t plank for 1 minute before, but now I’m constantly hitting 5 minutes in my sleep. I did not have perfect form, looking back on it, but I did still last as long as I did. The pain of guilt that came with not doing a day, coupled with the fear of regret for not being consistent, got me to last much longer. So when I did the planking, I was going over the base time. It was satisfying to get the work done, like finishing your work the day before summer break. I didn’t really do this challenge with anybody other than occasional timing with friends. Other than that, I didn’t really work with anybody that much. 

Another daily habit that I will be doing is doing one push up but every day. The amount of push up I do doubles for seven days. I am already done with the first 4, but it’s about to get really hard. I’m trying to become stronger and more athletic with this challenge, so I can become the best basketball player possible.

So after all of that planking, I am happy to announce: That YOU should do something like this. It will improve your abilities in all of the things that you want to improve on. You could do this with basketball, sit-ups, pull ups, anything. The compounding skill that you’ll earn from this experience will amaze you. So please, do try this.