One of my favourite core exercises is the plank. I can't tell you why, but they certainly beat a V crunch. But then anything does. Planks bizarrely cropped up in a discussion around my best mates Ed and Cath's house the other night. I don't know why - I didn't start it. However, since doing the iBodz thing, my friends seem compelled to talk about fitness in my presence. Perhaps this is a good thing. But it's like I'm become a spy in the camp, constantly checking up on their regimes. I keep saying that it's Oli who is the fitness guru - and I'm the 'suit' who does the business bit. This is soon forgotten and continue to give reasons why they haven't done any exercise 'for a while' i.e. two years. Not that I judge, obviously.
Sorry, I digress. We were talking about planks.
Justin - an ex-army lad, now builder in his late 30s, great guns, pretty buff, you know the type - said that he usually did 'extended' planks. I hadn't heard of these. Essentially, instead of resting on your forearms (check out the plank exercise to see what I mean), you rest on your hands and fully extend you arms - as if at the top of a press up. Justin duly demonstrated. It looked a lot harder than my 'normal' plank. I felt quite the amateur. Ed then suggested we have a competition to see 'who could do it for the longest'. A point to note: nothing much on the telly, the kids were in bed we're all over 30 and we'd consumed a fair amount of wine.
Justin seemed to hold his form with ease. A plank expert. How could we possibly compete? He managed 2 minutes and 17 seconds without so much as a sweat. There wasn't a hope in hell I was gonna get close to that as I knew getting to 60 seconds in standard plank pose was pushing it.
Ed's was next up. Not that I am at all competitive, but his form was awful (sorry best friend). I pride myself on a straight back, where Ed was more like soggy pasta - and a lot of shaking. That said, the boy did well. Managed 2 minutes 10 seconds. He must have been gutted he didn't hang on for another 8 seconds. Next it was my turn. I wasn't holding out much hope. The boys are quite sporty, and naturally fitter than me. That said, I was determined to beat Ed. Did I mention I was competitive?
The first 45 seconds were ok. I thought it would be MUCH harder than a standard plank, but it wasn't as hard as I thought. Time ticked by. I thought I was holding me own. Then it started to get harder, and harder. I wanted to reach at least 1 minute 45 seconds, to reach a reasonable time to the others. Could I do it? My legs were starting to shake, my back was starting to strain - I won't tell you what my abs felt like. I didn't know what time it was - but the TV was on a ad break - so I thought: FOCUS. If you can just hang on for one advert Longden, that's at least half a minute seconds. So I did. I concentrated on Muller light - for a whole 30 seconds. Then I thought - lets try and get to half way through the next one - an ad for Moonpig - an extremely irritating advert. Half way through I thought... try and hang on to the Moooooooonpig dot commmm - bit. And I did, but by this time every muscle in my body was shaking furiously, until I eventually collapsed. And collapse in a heap I did.
So - how did I do? I knew it had to be at least 1 minute 30 seconds, perhaps 2 minutes at a push. Have I beaten Ed's time? YES! 3 minutes 24 whole seconds. AMAZING. Trounced both of them. Thanks to moonpig dot com. And just goes to show - give youself some focus with a ladle full of competitive spirit, you'd be surprised what you can do.
The following day, I proudly told Oliver what I'd acheived. I could tell he was momentarily impressed... until he said - did you engage your abs? And I honestly couldn't remember. And at that precise moment, neither did I care!
