The plank world record belongs to Josef Šálek of the Czech Republic, who held an abdominal plank for 9 hours, 38 minutes, and 47 seconds in Pilsen on 20 May 2023 (Source: Guinness World Records, 2023). The women’s record is 4 hours, 30 minutes, and 11 seconds, set by Canadian grandmother DonnaJean Wilde on 21 March 2024 (Source: Guinness World Records, 2024). Both are official “longest time in an abdominal plank position” records — forearms on the floor, toes down, body straight. That’s the main plank category Guinness certifies as the headline record, and it’s the one every number below refers to.
TL;DR — Who holds the plank world record?
The plank world record is 9 hours, 38 minutes, 47 seconds, held by Josef Šálek (Czech Republic) since 20 May 2023. The women’s record is 4 hours, 30 minutes, 11 seconds, set by DonnaJean Wilde (Canada) on 21 March 2024. The only 2026 change is a kids’ mark: 9-year-old Jack Sims planked 1:01:05 in July.
Table of contents
2026 Update: 9-Year-Old Sets a New Kids Plank Record
The newest name in planking is nine years old. In early July 2026, Jack Sims of Kennewick, Washington held a plank for 1 hour, 1 minute, 5 seconds, setting the Kids World Records mark for the boys’ 7–9 division and beating the previous record of roughly 51 minutes by ten full minutes (Source: Apple Valley News Now, 2026). The attempt made national news, including a segment on WRAL (video here), and the full story is in the Apple Valley News Now report.
His origin story is small and perfect. Jack won a school planking contest with a six-minute hold, then trained for six months to multiply that by ten (Source: Apple Valley News Now, 2026). Next target: the 10-year-old record of 1 hour, 16 minutes, once he has a birthday.
One thing to keep straight. Kids World Records (kidsworldrecords.com) is a separate organization from Guinness, with its own age brackets and verification process. Jack’s record does not touch the Guinness titles, which remain exactly where they were.
| Category | Record | Holder | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boys 7–9 (Kids World Records) | 1 hr 1 min 5 sec | Jack Sims (USA) | Jul 2026 |
| Age 10 (Kids World Records) | 1 hr 16 min | Holder not named in press coverage | Pre-2026 |
| Guinness men’s abdominal plank | 9 hr 38 min 47 sec | Josef Šálek (Czech Republic) | 20 May 2023 |
| Guinness women’s abdominal plank | 4 hr 30 min 11 sec | DonnaJean Wilde (Canada) | 21 Mar 2024 |
Last verified: August 2026.
If you came here after seeing a viral clip and wondering whether “longest plank ever” and “abdominal plank record” are the same thing — they are. There’s exactly one recognized title per gender, and both current holders are still standing as of July 2026. Everything else you’ll see (weighted planks, side planks, ab-wheel holds) is a separate niche record.
Who holds the plank world record right now?
Josef Šálek holds the men’s record at 9:38:47, and DonnaJean Wilde holds the women’s at 4:30:11. Neither has been beaten since being set. Here’s the quick reference before we get into the stories behind the numbers. Both Guinness titles are unchanged as of August 2026.
| Category | Holder | Time | Date set | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s abdominal plank | Josef Šálek (Czech Republic) | 9 hr 38 min 47 sec | 20 May 2023 | Pilsen, Czechia |
| Women’s abdominal plank | DonnaJean Wilde (Canada) | 4 hr 30 min 11 sec | 21 Mar 2024 | Magrath, Alberta |
One clarification worth making early, because it trips people up constantly. Guinness recognizes the abdominal plank — the standard forearm-and-toes hold. When you search “longest plank exercise record” or “abdominal plank world record,” you’re chasing the same title from different angles. There is no separate official record for a straight-arm plank, and the “40 lb weighted plank” figures you’ll see attached to Šálek’s name are a different record he also holds, not the main one.
The men’s record: Hood, Scali, and Šálek
The men’s plank record has changed hands three times in four years, climbing from 8 hours to nearly 10. What’s remarkable isn’t just the times — it’s who set them.
The modern era starts with George Hood, a retired US Marine Corps officer and former DEA special agent who reclaimed the record in February 2020 at age 62 with a hold of 8 hours, 15 minutes, 15 seconds (Source: Guinness World Records, 2020). Hood’s prep reads like a military logbook: he later reported roughly 2,100 hours of plank training, plus hundreds of thousands of push-ups and sit-ups, in the run-up. He’d actually held versions of the record on and off since 2011, making him the closest thing this event has to a founding figure.
Then Australia’s Daniel Scali blew the ceiling open. In August 2021 he planked for 9 hours, 30 minutes, 1 second — a jump of well over an hour (Source: Guinness World Records, 2021). Scali did it while managing Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic condition that makes his arm hypersensitive to pain, which turns the achievement from “impressive” into something closer to unbelievable.
Šálek edged past him less than two years later. On 20 May 2023, the Czech coach and therapist — “Joska” to most people — logged 9:38:47, beating Scali by about eight and a half minutes (Source: Guinness World Records, 2023). Compared to Scali’s leap, that’s a razor-thin margin, and it tells you the men’s record may be approaching the outer edge of what’s physically sustainable. Šálek has since piled on side records too, including the longest abdominal plank while wearing a 40 lb pack (85 minutes), but 9:38:47 is his headline.
Who Is Josef Šálek?
Josef Šálek was 53 when he set the record in May 2023, which puts him in his mid-fifties as of 2026 (Source: Guinness World Records, 2023). He’s a Czech therapist, lecturer, and personal-development coach — most people call him Joska — and his path to the record is the opposite of a lifelong-athlete story. A few years before the attempt, by his own account to Guinness, he was carrying an extra 15 kg (33 lb) and leaning hard on alcohol and cigarettes. He rebuilt his life around training and now holds multiple Guinness titles, including the longest abdominal plank with a 40 lb pack, at 85 minutes (Source: Guinness World Records, 2024).
The pattern to notice: the last two holders both trained through significant chronic pain. At this level, the limiter stops being muscle and becomes tolerance — the willingness to stay in a position that hurts for the better part of a workday.
The women’s record: Kalimera, Glowacka, and Wilde
The women’s record has a longer, more layered progression than the men’s, and — this is the part most articles still get wrong — Dana Glowacka is no longer the holder. Her 4:19:55 stood from 2019 until March 2024, when DonnaJean Wilde broke it. A lot of the web hasn’t caught up.
Cyprus’s Maria Kalimera was the first woman past three hours (3:31 in 2015). Then Canadian yoga teacher Dana Glowacka set 4 hours, 19 minutes, 55 seconds in May 2019 at age 48, at a plank-training conference in Illinois (Source: Men’s Health Australia, 2020). That number became the one everybody quoted for the next five years.
The current holder is DonnaJean Wilde, a 58-year-old retired teacher and grandmother of 12 from Alberta. On 21 March 2024, at her former high school in front of a crowd of students, she held 4:30:11 — about ten minutes past Glowacka’s mark (Source: Guinness World Records, 2024). Her backstory is the best part: she started planking twelve years earlier after breaking her wrist left her unable to run or lift, and she now planks up to three hours daily. For the record attempt she ramped to six hours a day, split into two blocks. Her husband’s take was that the chronic pain and numbness she lives with in her hands actually helped her push through — the same pain-tolerance theme that runs through the men’s side. Her age is no outlier here; see our guide to calisthenics for men over 50 for why endurance holds age unusually well.
Here’s the full women’s progression, which doubles as a small history of the sport.
| Year | Holder | Time | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Betty Lou Sweeney (USA) | 36 min 58 sec | Set at age 71 |
| 2011 | Eva Bulzomi (USA) | 40 min 1 sec | |
| 2014 | Gabi Ury (USA) | 1 hr 20 min | Set at age 16 |
| 2014 | Eva Bulzomi (USA) | 2 hr 12 min | First woman past 2 hours |
| 2015 | Maria Kalimera (Cyprus) | 3 hr 31 min | First woman past 3 hours |
| 2019 | Dana Glowacka (Canada) | 4 hr 19 min 55 sec | Held for ~5 years |
| 2024 | DonnaJean Wilde (Canada) | 4 hr 30 min 11 sec | Current record |
How the records compare to a normal plank
Wilde’s daily warm-up is longer than most people’s lifetime best. A healthy adult with a strictly enforced, neutral-spine plank typically fails somewhere between 20 and 60 seconds; complete beginners often tap out at 15 to 30 (Source: Marathon Handbook, 2025). Hitting a clean 60 seconds already puts you above average. And for a humbling data point: even 9-year-old Jack Sims’s 1:01:05 kids record is more than 60 times the 20–60 seconds a typical adult can hold with strict form.
The catch is form. Self-reported plank times overstate real hold duration by a wide margin because hips start sagging long before people quit — the moment your spine drops out of neutral, you’re not really planking anymore, you’re just tired in a plank-shaped position. Getting your proper plank form dialed in matters far more than the clock.
Put the records against a realistic personal best and the gap is almost comic:
| Plank effort | Approx. time | Multiple of a “good” 90-sec hold |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 15–30 sec | 0.3× |
| Solid, strict form | 60–90 sec | 1× |
| Advanced / trained | 3–5 min | ~3× |
| Women’s record (Wilde) | 4 hr 30 min | ~180× |
| Men’s record (Šálek) | 9 hr 38 min | ~385× |
For almost everyone reading this, the useful target isn’t the record — it’s a clean two-minute hold, which is roughly where the front plank stops measuring core strength and starts measuring patience. We break that down in how long you should actually hold a plank. If you want an official standard to chase instead, the plank is now a scored event in the Marine Corps PFT plank event, and the Army Fitness Test plank standards give you exact times to beat by age and sex.
Is planking for hours actually safe — and how do they train?
Holding a plank for nine hours is not something a doctor would recommend, and the record holders know it. These are heavily conditioned specialists doing a supervised one-off attempt, not a repeatable training practice. The main risks in an ultra-long hold are shoulder and elbow overuse, lower-back strain if form degrades, and — under Guinness rules that allow brief water and towel breaks — the sheer cardiovascular and mental toll of staying isometric for that long.
What their training actually looks like, based on what the holders have described:
- Enormous daily volume. Wilde planks up to three hours a day year-round and doubled it before her attempt. Hood logged thousands of cumulative training hours. This is the non-negotiable part.
- Pain management over muscle-building. Past a few minutes, the plank stops being a strength exercise. The holders train their nervous system to tolerate discomfort more than they train their abs.
- Supporting work. Hood paired planking with huge push-up and sit-up numbers to build the shoulder-girdle and postural endurance a long hold demands.
- Supervision and pacing. Record attempts are monitored, with the allowed short breaks planned in advance to manage cramping and hydration.
For a normal training goal, none of this applies. Stacking planks past two or three minutes gives you steeply diminishing returns for core strength and rising injury risk — the smarter move is harder plank variations inside a structured calisthenics plan, not a longer clock.
Frequently asked questions
Who holds the plank world record?
Josef Šálek of the Czech Republic holds the men’s record at 9 hours, 38 minutes, 47 seconds, set on 20 May 2023. DonnaJean Wilde of Canada holds the women’s record at 4 hours, 30 minutes, 11 seconds, set on 21 March 2024. Both are current as of July 2026.
What is the female plank world record?
The women’s abdominal plank record is 4 hours, 30 minutes, 11 seconds, set by DonnaJean Wilde, a 58-year-old grandmother from Alberta, Canada, on 21 March 2024. It broke Dana Glowacka’s 2019 mark of 4:19:55 by about ten minutes.
How long is the longest plank ever?
The longest plank ever officially recognized is Josef Šálek’s 9 hours, 38 minutes, 47 seconds in 2023 — the men’s Guinness World Record for longest time in an abdominal plank position. No one has planked longer under Guinness verification.
What was George Hood’s plank record?
George Hood, a retired US Marine and DEA agent, held the men’s record at 8 hours, 15 minutes, 15 seconds, set in February 2020 at age 62. Daniel Scali broke it in 2021, and Josef Šálek holds it now.
Can I beat the plank world record?
Realistically, no — the current holders train for hours daily for years and are managing extreme pain tolerance, not just core strength. A strong, strict plank for an untrained-but-fit adult is about 1 to 2 minutes. The records are roughly 200 to 400 times longer.
Does Guinness recognize any other type of plank record?
Guinness certifies the abdominal (forearm) plank as the main category, with separate niche records such as the longest weighted plank. There is no official record for a straight-arm plank, and side-plank and other variations are tracked separately from the headline title.
Has the plank world record been broken in 2026?
No. Josef Šálek’s 9:38:47 men’s record from May 2023 and DonnaJean Wilde’s 4:30:11 women’s record from March 2024 both still stand as of August 2026. The 2026 headline came from a different body: 9-year-old Jack Sims set a Kids World Records mark of 1:01:05 in July.
Sources and verification
Every record, date, and name above is drawn from Guinness World Records’ official listings and news pages, with secondary confirmation from the Marine Corps Times, Men’s Health, and local news coverage of the 2026 kids record.
- Longest time in an abdominal plank position (male) — Guinness World Records
- Champion of fitness extends record titles — Guinness World Records (2024)
- Longest plank record smashed with staggering new time (Daniel Scali) — Guinness World Records (2021)
- Former US Marine breaks 8-hour plank record at 62 (George Hood) — Guinness World Records (2020)
- At 62, Marine veteran sets record — Marine Corps Times (2020)
- Canadian grandmother planks for 4.5 hours (DonnaJean Wilde) — Guinness World Records (2024)
- History of the women’s plank world record — Guinness World Records (2024)
- Dana Glowacka plank world record — Men’s Health Australia (2020)
- Average plank time by age and sex — Marathon Handbook (2025)
- Longest plank by 7–9 year olds — Kids World Records (2026)
- 9-year-old from Kennewick sets kids world record for longest plank — Apple Valley News Now (2026)
- 9-year-old sets world record for longest plank (video) — WRAL (2026)
Change log: Aug 3, 2026 — Added July 2026 kids plank record (Jack Sims, 1:01:05), age-group record table, Josef Šálek bio, new FAQ; verified Guinness records unchanged; updated title and sources.
