Alberta grandmother DonnaJean Wilde holds a plank for five hours in Utah
DonnaJean Wilde, 61, a former teacher from Magrath, Alberta, held an abdominal plank for five hours at the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah, on Tuesday. Her own Guinness world record, set in 2024, 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 at Utah Tech University’s Burns Arena, at the opening of the Huntsman World Senior Games, and was still there at about 8:03 in the evening, a spokesperson for the Games told Storyful. The judges worked hour-long shifts and changed over several times while she held it.
Her record until then, set at Magrath High School in Alberta, where she used to teach, on 21 March 2024, was four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds. It had beaten the previous mark, held by another Canadian, Dana Glowacka, by more than ten minutes.
Kyle Case, chief executive of the Games, told KSL that she had come to the organisers six months ago and said she wanted to break it 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
The video of the moment the clock reached five hours had more than four million views by Wednesday, KSL reported.
A sling
Wilde is a mother of five and a grandmother of twelve, and was a high school teacher and vice principal. She started planking in 2013, when the exercise went viral and her children were challenging one another to hold it longest, Women’s Health reported. 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. She began training for a record in 2023, with push-ups, weights, running and a great deal of planking, and Guinness reported that she sometimes practised for up to six hours a day. In 2024 she also set a record for push-ups in an hour, 1,575 of them, which has since been beaten.
Next
Her son, Ray, told Lethbridge News Now that the family will send the video to Guinness World Records, which has to verify it before five hours becomes the official record.
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