When DonnaJean Wilde first attempted a plank for a fun family challenge back in 2013, she had no way of knowing a decade later, she would solidify her name as a Guinness World Record holder and inspire people around the world.
The 59-year-old mother of five and grandmother of 12 from Welling, Alta. has always loved fitness. A runner at heart, Wilde would often put in her kilometres before the rest of her family woke up. However, that all changed when she broke her wrist while cleaning up after teaching music class.
“I was heartbroken. I thought, what am I going to do for six weeks,” says Wilde, who found herself with a cast that almost reached her elbow.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Wilde to find her muse. Right around the time of her accident, a viral challenge was taking over the internet and inspiring millions of people worldwide to get on the floor and plank. While her grown children were visiting one day, they decided to take part in the challenge.
Despite having never planked a day in her life, Wilde joined her family on their forearms—one of the few positions she could hold with her bulky cast. And later in the day when the family had gone home, she decided to do it again. She was hooked.
“I couldn’t run. I could hardly walk down the road with a sling, but I could plank,” she says. “It was such a pivotal moment for me that day. It just changed my life.”
Six weeks later when the cast came off, rather than give up planking, Wilde’s love of it snowballed. She planked at the school; she planked while grading papers. She made it to 10 minutes in a plank and then longer.
When the COVID-19 pandemic was challenging the world, Wilde was taking on her own challenge—her children wanted to see just how long she could hold the “perfect” plank (hands, elbows and feet on the floor, hips level, body unmoving). As it turned out, she could hold the position for nearly two hours.
Over the next few years, Wilde took a more disciplined approach to planking, putting more emphasis on form and time, and in January 2023, she officially began training for the Guinness World Record. Push-ups, weight lifting, running and of course planking all played heavily into her regime.
On March 21, 2024, Wilde’s friends and family gathered in the gymnasium at Magrath High School where Wilde had spent her career as a teacher. She climbed onto a platform in the middle of the gym, an official Guinness adjudicator standing next to her watching her every move.
The clock began. Students, many of whom Wilde taught, family and friends gathered in the gymnasium for support.
The first two hours passed with relative ease, but as Wilde entered her third hour, pain began to set in. As anyone who has tried to plank would know, when pain creeps in, it’s hard to push it away. But Wilde is no stranger to pain.
When finishing her undergraduate degree in December 2006, she was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disease that causes inflammation in the spinal cord and leads to nerve damage in different parts of the body. For Wilde, that meant permanent pain in her hands.
The former school teacher was able to use her experience dealing with constant pain to stay focused and strong.
And when the pain and discomfort became too much, Wilde just had to glance up to see all the love and support filling the gymnasium to remind her why she was doing this.
“Looking up and seeing my grandkids there, and they made posters and were cheering me on, that’s what kept me going.”
At four hours, 30 minutes and 11 seconds, when Wilde’s knees touched the platform and the clock stopped, she had done more than enough to take the Guinness World Record for longest time in an abdominal plank position (female).
But this grandma had more to show because six months after her first record-setting feat, Wilde was at it again. This time, to set the record for the most push-ups in one hour.
On September 28, 2024, at the Diamond Willow Lodge senior home, again surrounded by friends, family, and residents of the lodge, including her 91-year-old mother-in-law, Wilde would again put her body to the test. She had 60 minutes on the clock to beat the current record of 1,207 push-ups.
When the clock hit zero, she had more than smashed that record with 1,575 push-ups. Miraculously, she would have padded the number further if, with only two minutes to go, she hadn’t dislocated her shoulder.
It may not have been how Wilde wanted to run out the clock, but she was now a two-time Guinness World Record holder.
Her positivity, determination and strength are an inspiration. Racking up millions of views online, Wilde’s record-breaking feats are empowering others to lean into fitness.
For Wilde, planking helped give her purpose when her regular activities were out of reach, and it’s continued to make her feel strong throughout the years. Planking and push-ups may not be for everyone, but the former teacher has one lesson she’d like to share of her experience: “Have your own toolbox of things that will help you stay happy and healthy and walk tall and stand tall and be confident through your days.”
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