Planking for Parks

My personal trainer Caroline is slightly mad, lovely, but slightly mad as she planks just about anywhere. Snow, mountains, beaches you name it she planks there.  I've even seen her do it with 15kg weighted Bergen on!!  She is also very good at building in a plank or two at my training sessions - PT just wouldn't be the same without some weird and wonderful variation on the faithful plank.

I didn't know there were so many options when getting into this seemingly quite simple position..... and then uncontrollably shaking for as long as you can hold it.

Here are just some of the delights I have been subjected to:

• Forearm plank
• Straight arm plank 
• Side plank
• Spider-Man plank (yes this is a thing!)
• Plank up-downs
• Hip twister plank 
• Bird dog plank
• Mountain climbers
• And my least favourite of all..... the plank rows!

As a little dedication to Caroline and everything she is doing to help me get prepared for the big climb, I like to take the occasional plank photo for her.  Just a little token to show her that although once upon a time I couldn't manage 20 seconds of a basic forearm plank my mindset now see's opportunities to plank in the strangest of places, thanks to her positive approach to personal training.

I'm writing this post lying on a Cabana in Bali and looking out to the Indian Ocean - so here's today's dedication to Caroline....

There are many benefits of planking, none of which I'm going to list here but feel free to get googling - and why not join in the fun and try a few planks out yourself.  Simple but very effective and can be done anywhere!

There is actually a point to this post as at the start of the year I set myself a challenge to plank every day.  That's 365 planks.  But that's not all, as I feel my stomach muscles getting stronger I'm increasing the plank time, month by month.

In January I started with one minute every day.  I added on 15 seconds in February and then 5 seconds each month since - so now it's April I am planking for one minute 25 seconds each day.

If I continue to increase by 5 seconds each month, by the end of this year I would have planked for 35,325 seconds - that's 589 minutes!

I'm not doing this for fun, I'm doing this for African Parks.  They need money to double the number of Parks they manage by 2020.  I'm obviously aiming to raise funds by climbing Kilimanjaro and as planks are part of my training I am quite literally planking for Parks!

It would be great if you could spare a few pennies to sponsor me - even a penny per minute of planking - that's only £5.89 but it all adds up!

Any money you can find to help get Africa's wildlife back would make my wobbly arms, shakey legs and numb tum totally worth it.

Climbing Kilimanjaro is going to be a massive challenge for me in 2018 but I've got to get through six and a half hours of planking in 2017 first. 

Just click on the 'donate now' button on my home page, if you're lucky I'll show you my six pack!  😉