A 62-year-old former Marine set a new Guinness World Record after holding an abdominal plank for 8 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds.
George Hood retook the title for world’s longest-held abdominal plank that he first won in 2011 by planking for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Mao Weidong of China took Hood’s record after holding a plank for 8 hours, 1 minute, and 1 second in 2016, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Hood spent over 7 hours a day training for the past 18 months in preparation for his record-setting plank on Feb. 15.
“It’s 4-5 hours a day in the plank pose,” Hood told CNN. “Then I do 700 pushups a day, 2,000 situps a day in sets of a hundred, 500 leg squats a day. For upper body and the arms, I do approximately 300 arm curls a day.”
The former Marine and retired Drug Enforcement Administration supervisory special agent said the toughest part of holding an eight-hour plank is when the skin on his elbows tears under the pressure.
“The skin will break and they will bleed,” Hood said. “When that happens, [my coach] talks me through it and I take lots of water and eventually they go numb. When the numbness sets in, I’m generally pretty good. It’s just a matter of being tired and wanting to stop.”
Hood set the record at 515 Fitness, a gym for military and law enforcement veterans and others struggling with mental illness. The gym hires licensed therapists and trainers to help people cope with mental illness through physical fitness. Blue H.E.L.P., a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that tracks police deaths, reported that 228 officers died by suicide in 2019, more than all other line-of-duty causes of death combined.
“When you’re in a combat situation, and even in law enforcement with the agents that I used to work with, we get involved in shootings,” Hood said. “Some people don’t handle it well because they’re burdened with other issues that are running in the background, whether it be marital issues, kid issues, or financial problems. Sometimes those things can push people over the edge, and they don’t know how to flush it out, how to talk about it.”
