Surely they mean minutes and seconds, right? Wrong.
If you’ve ever been to a gym you probably know the exercise known as a plank.
One of the most basic, tried and tested and effective core exercises, it requires you to stay in a fixed position and engage your core muscles for a fixed amount of time or for as long as you can manage it.
You can read about it in more detail here but we think it’s fair to say that most normal people can only manage a couple of minutes before collapsing to the ground in agony.
Danish fitness instructor Tom Hoel is no ordinary person, however and at the weekend, he managed to plank for four hours and 28 minutes, regaining the title of world record holder that had been snatched from him by Chinese man Mao Weidong last October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axeHMu3rk80
Mao, for what it’s worth, could only manage a measly four hours and 26 minutes. Weakling.
We wouldn’t be surprised if Mao launches another attempt to claim back the world record in future though; when he set the record last October, he not only beat Hoel’s previous record but he smashed it by a mind-boggling one hour and 19 minutes.
That personal best of two minutes and 20 seconds isn’t sounding so impressive now, eh?
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge