Alberta grandmother DonnaJean Wilde holds a plank for five hours in Utah
DonnaJean Wilde, 61, a former teacher from Magrath, Alberta, held a plank for five hours at the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah, on Tuesday. Her own world record was four and a half hours.
9 October 2026
Photo: Huntsman World Senior Games, via KSL
DonnaJean Wilde went down onto her forearms at 3:03 in the afternoon on Tuesday, in the Burns Arena at Utah Tech University, as part of the opening of the Huntsman World Senior Games. She was still there at about 8:03 in the evening. The judges worked in hour-long shifts and changed over several times while she held it, a spokesperson for the Games told Storyful.
Her previous record was four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds, set on 21 March 2024 at Magrath High School in Alberta, where she used to teach. That one beat the old mark, held by another Canadian, Dana Glowacka, by more than ten minutes.
Kyle Case, who runs the Games, told KSL that she had come to them six months ago and said she wanted to break her record there.
So we brainstormed a little bit and came up with this idea of partnering and coupling it with the opening ceremonies, and holy cow! Her performance was unbelievable! The crowd there and the energy and everybody cheering was just fantastic.Kyle Case, Huntsman World Senior Games, to KSL
Photo: Huntsman World Senior Games, via Storyful and KYMA
By Wednesday the video of the clock reaching five hours had been watched more than four million times.
Wilde is a mother of five and a grandmother of twelve. She taught high school and was a vice principal. She started planking in 2013, Women’s Health reported, when the exercise went viral and her children were competing to see who could hold it longest. She had hurt her arm and could not run.
I couldn’t run. I could hardly walk down the road with a sling, but I could plank. It was such a pivotal moment for me that day. It just changed my life.DonnaJean Wilde, to Impact Magazine
During the pandemic her children timed her at two hours. In 2023 she started training properly, with push-ups, weights, running and a lot of planking, sometimes six hours of it in a day, according to Guinness. In 2024 she also set a record for push-ups in an hour, 1,575 of them, which has since been beaten.
Five hours is not official yet. Her son, Ray, told Lethbridge News Now that the family will send the video to Guinness World Records to be checked.
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