Planking Alone

A crowd of people in my office have begun a 30-day planking program — holding ourselves up in a "plank" position, either on elbows or hands. We began at 30 seconds and are working our way up to three minutes.

At 11 a.m. every day we gather in the hallway near the elevators to chat and hold. Thirty seconds of planking isn't much. Three minutes is quite a lot. Adding seconds in small increments attempts to blunt the difference between these two.

This works best when done in company. Someone plays music on their phone, or we share recent celebrity sightings. Someone saw Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Philadelphia train station. Someone else bumped into the heir to the British throne — that is, literally bumped into Prince William. Twice!

When I'm not in the office, I plank on my own.  I set my phone to two minutes 10 seconds or whatever the time might be, get down on the floor, suck in my gut and hold ... and hold .... and hold.

I try not to watch the seconds tick down on my phone timer, but I can't help myself. Alone in my living room, I'm ready to collapse, to pause briefly, anything to end the pain. As I watch, the seconds seem to move in slow motion, a painfully stilted procession that will never, ever finish.

Want to make time pass more slowly? Just plank alone.