For The Love Of Planking

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
Mohandas Gandhi

If you’ve ever heard of planking, you’ve probably wondered how these extraordinary individuals pull it off. I found one picture of three “plankers” with so much raw talent that they were actually levitating while planking and thought I should share it. Here it is…The technique must take an awful lot of practice but apparently it’s an awesome workout for the abs. It’s a relatively new market, really. Sure Snoopy used to exhibit his well-developed talent with such grace and precision that it went virtually un-noticed throughout the “Peanuts” hay-day. But lately this planking craze has been catching a lot of buzz. A guy in Australia even died for his love of planking.

I don’t know if I’m prepared to take on all the physical training necessary to actually be able to sustain a properly executed “plank” long enough for someone to get a good snapshot but supposedly, May 25th is going to be the first ever “Planking Day” and I have been challenged to pose for a planking picture that originally started out as a joke. I’m going to attempt to perform the world’s first ever “Plank Plank”. Thats right, if I can get myself mentally prepared enough (and of course, build a regulation sized plank) by next Wednesday, I might be able to propel myself into Plank Superstardom and finally get the recognition I’ve been “crarving” for ever since I heard of this YouTube phenomenon.

My Rigorous Training Regimen

I know I’ve been using quite a few big words during this post, but Ido have a suspicion that not everybody is as thrilled about planking as I claim to be (I sat and thought about what to write about for 20 minutes before planking popped into my head) so sensationalization appears to be almost mandatory. Anyways, I have to stay focussed on my goal of becoming a world renowned planker, so here’s the schedule.

I plan to get about 7 hours of training tonight immediately after I finish this post. That’s right, I going to attempt to actually get game ready while I sleep! I’ve written about fitness before but I have to admit, I’ve never had this much passion for a test of physical strength since I repeatedly attempted to make that thing at the Carnival hit the bell by whackin’ it with a sledge hammer.

Here’s the routine:

1. Lay on stomach.
2. Put pillow on left side.
3. Lay close enough to the right side so that if move will fall out of bed.
4. Try to stay still for whole night.
5. If fall, swallow pride, dust self off, and immediately get back to training.
6. Wake up, end exercise, load up on protein, and try to take easy until next session which will commence at approximately 2:00pm in afternoon, then 7:30 in evening.

The Game Face

I was looking at a picture of a guy playing guitar the other day and I couldn’t help but think that he looked like he was poised to try to shove the headstock through some enemy tribesman’s heart. Then I was looking at pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger (I’ll be drawing some new caricatures in the near future) and noticed in his younger photos he looks a lot meaner than his most recent ones.

After thinking about it a little, I realized that when I was younger, I used to wear my game face quite a bit whether I was actually playing a game (any thing from baseball to video games to tiddlywinks) or just out in public with people I wasn’t familiar with. It seems like a tribal thing, like the unspoken “stay out of my way or I’ll run through you”. It probably comes from the flight or fight thing and from what I’ve read that raises stress levels.

I guess it’s something you grow out of though because I don’t really feel the need to cringe my face up for potentially the biggest challenge of my life, but then, nobody would actually know the difference anyway because during a properly executed plank the face will be firmly planted in the ground (or in my case, a plank).

Q: Have you ever had to prepare to achieve anything in the name of love?