Thank you Unsplash for the image

 

On the 25th of October my 6th grade Language Arts class started planking. Now I know what you’re thinking, planking in Language Arts, no way. Well, it’s true. We started out with 30 seconds and every day and every week we would add 15 seconds and keep going and going. As James Clear said in his book Atomic Habits, “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” What that means is you can set a goal but you may not do that goal so making it a system makes it a habit which we did every day.

So the day came for the plank challenge and right now I’m thinking no way I’m getting past five minutes. Then I realize we can listen to music, thank goodness. Okay, so we’re on the ground ready to get started. We start planking and my music turns on. I completely zone out and I don’t have a timer because that doesn’t help me, so I just listen and listen until about the fifteen minute mark. Then I start realizing I have to start locking in, so about eight minutes later I am sweating the most I’ve ever sweated in school. I’m exhausted I want to give up, but I just can’t. So three minutes later me and one person were left. The period was almost over so we called it a tie ~ twenty seven minutes of straight up planking. The next day,  I felt cramps and was sore but it was worth it. I pushed my body to a limit that I thought I couldn’t go. Will you push your body to new limits?