Doing planks every day for a month (or 2)

15/05/2020

I’m currently at day 27. Kind of a strange situation how this came about, and I never thought that I would’ve made it this far.

I started small; I’d say. This wasn’t intended to be plank challenge at all. It started of as a “can Sashimi cross out boxes on a piece of paper stuck to her wall every day?” literally that simple, just crossing out boxes. But I still managed to miss about 3 days at the start. I was in a bad place, having really low self-esteem and all, and I wanted to prove to myself that I had enough discipline to do something, ANYTHING, at all for 30 days.

Though I missed a few days, it still proved to me that I could be consistent if I wanted to. And it did help me to feel less shitty about myself, even though it was literally that small of a task. Especially since the lockdown started somewhere in the middle of that and that was an inkling of routine in a time of chaos. Y’know, mindlessly crossing out boxes on a piece of paper is definitely easier than doing Kattis problems every day. Ha-ha. The boxes thing started probably on 22^nd March. And was supposed to end 20^th April.

And sometime near the end, I guess  I got inspired by some YouTube video or something. But I drew more boxes on the bottom reminder of blank paper that I cut out and decided that I will now up the challenge by doing planks everyday in order to cross out those boxes, instead of just crossing boxes. I thought I was going to start after the previous calendar. But I decided that if I was gonna start, why not start that day? And I did. I started doing planks everyday from 19^th April. Its now 15^th May, and I have only missed a day. Which was the, uh, 8^th day. Which I was able to do the next day instead of giving up on it. Though, somedays, I had to resort to doing the days’ planks after midnight because I had forgotten or woken up too late which threw off my rhythm.

I started with 60 seconds on day 1. And then I increased it by 5 seconds each day until I reached 90s on day 7. And then I decided to do 2 times of 60 seconds instead. This time increasing the first and second reps one by one by 5 seconds each day. Until I reached twice of 90 seconds on day 20. And reverted to (60, 60, 90). And still slowly increasing.

I am thinking of taking a break but I am afraid that it will destroy this precocious habit that I have built.

Reasons that I want to take a break include the pain and stiffness in my neck and shoulders. And I think it may be good to take a break for some 2 days, and then try for a personal best after that. Maybe something like 2.5 minutes might be doable if I’m in a good condition. Even though planks seem like such a simple exercise that doesn’t require much effort to do daily. I still figure it might b beneficial to take abit of a rest before continuing. Perhaps after I complete 30 days.

And again, this may all just seem like bullshit to fit people who do much more exercise daily than just what, 4 minutes of exercise that I do? But I consider this an accomplishment. Considering that I am a complete lazy bum who will is constantly on the brink of becoming homeless because I piss my parents off.