A daily 15-minute plank is the secret key to success.

Careful: side-effects may include six-pack abs too.

The deal

You are lounging on a random Saturday afternoon doing particularly nothing at all. A blue man with a goatee and a cool turban shows up and introduces himself as a genie.

He says he can grant you three wishes. You could have literally anything you ever wanted in life but there's just one catch. 

A simple cost. A trade so-to-speak. A few hours every day would be spent in pain — each day every day, for the rest of your life. 

Would you take it? 

Hell yah. Sign me up home slice! In fact, I would tell the genie that I don't have a few hours to spare everyday for this pain nonsense. I tell him to dial up the pain and shorten the time to minutes and then and only then, we could talk. 

The genie looks at me with amusement and declares that he has just the thing for masochists like me. He dials down the time knob and cranks up the pain-meter to the maximum. He turns the dial past  “pouring laundry detergent into your eyes...” turns it past “ripping off your fingernails with your own teeth...” turns it even past "unimaginable pain and suffering." 

At the top of this pain scale is just two words...

The Plank.

It looks like a deceptively innocent exercise. You rest on your forearms in what looks like the pushup position and you simply just hang out there. You aren't even moving. How bad could it be?

Real bad. Real stinking bad. And that's why I chose this exercise as the cornerstone of my fitness routine — the base upon which everything else as been built. And with it, I will conquer the world.

Because I love pain and suffering and it loves me. Not really, but it sounds nice to say.

So then…

How did the plank come to be in my life?

Like most things in life, pretty coincidentally. 

My ex had some sort of challenge going on in her workplace. People were betting money they could do more of a certain exercise than another. One person had proudly declared they could hold a plank 4x as much as what she could hold. Since she could hold 2 minute and 30 second plank, his plank had to be ten minutes. Try as he might, the dude failed.

Curious to see how I would fare, I took on the challenge as well. In a few minutes, my abs were blasted with holy fire and I ended up being sore for an entire week afterwards. In disbelief that such a simple exercise could be so painful, I resolved to do something about it. How could something that looked so harmless be so disproportionately painful?

And so, on that fateful day, the stupidest of journeys began. Call it hubris, call it naivety. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I quickly realized I wasn't going to succeed without a system. We’ll get to that soon. But first,

Why should you plank?

The plank is without a doubt, an excellent workout. 

By holding up your body like a straight rigid board, you end up working out a million muscle groups all at the same time - the biceps, the neck, the shoulders, the glutes, the thighs and the back. You reduce your chance for lower back pain and help keep your spine properly aligned, helping with your overall posture all at the same time.

Figure 1. (reproduced with permission from bestselling book: “How to Make It As a Stripper”

Talk about bang for your buck. Wowza.

Not only does it satiate my love for efficiency and productivity by cramming an intense multi-body exercise in a few short minutes, it exercises one more part of the body — the most important organ of them all. 

Yup you guessed it… the mighty brain.

Or more specifically, the mind. 

Stripper-like Brain

The Comfort Zone

There is a nice bubble around all of us that our mind likes to live in. It's called the Comfort Zone. In this Zone, life is easy. 

In fact, it’s so easy and comfortable, we’ve built an entire castle to keep us in it. In this place, we are the indisputable champions of this kingdom. 

Inside, life is stable. Inside, everything is known and assured. No one challenges your dominion here. But there is a limit to how much you can do in here. 

But when you sit on top of your tower, you are able to look beyond the walls of your kingdom and you see incredible sights — green rolling pastures, rainbows leading to pots of golds and a mystical fantasy place called the Land of Dreams. 

You want to go there but that place is sadly outside of your Kingdom. It's completely outside of your Comfort Zone. How do you get there? It's only a few paces away. It's not even that far. 

But you rarely leave your Comfort Zone because of the Black Fog of the Unknown. Surrounding your entire kingdom on all sides is this seemingly impenetrable barrier you never voluntarily put yourself in. 

This Black Fog of the Unknown traps you in your kingdom because you dare not venture into this place. Who knows what scary things exist in here? You open the front gates and you just stare at it. You see nothing but your mind isn't so sure. Your mind conjures up vile demons and monstrous beasts. The cold air of the Fog chills your soul and makes the hairs in your butt crack stand up. 

Be it physical or emotional, there is always some form of pain you must confront when stepping into its black mist. Leaving your kingdom is not so easy despite the Land of the Dreams being literally right there. You shut the door and go back into the safety of your castle.

I'll venture forth into the Fog another day you say. Instead, you go back into your tower and stare off into the distance. It's nice to just look at the Land of Dreams too I guess.

And that is why the plank is so crucial of an exercise. With every second you successfully hold this position, you push the mind, desensitizing it to the pain of the Black Fog. Because when the burning pain begins, I know I am deep in the Black mist. The more painful it becomes, the heavier the Black Fog envelops me, encouraging me to fall back to the safety of my kingdom. When I do not relent, the Black Fog gets angry and transforms itself into a twister. Its icy winds howl all around me. The scream of a million dying harpies fill my ears and what air I have left is sucked straight out of my lungs. I just want to curl up into a ball and lie there on the ground and crawl back to safety.

I do not though. 

Because every second longer I remain in the Black Fog, the weaker and less scary it becomes... until it clears completely, winning another square foot for my kingdom. I will expand my Comfort Zone inch by inch until the Land of Dreams is squarely inside of my kingdom.

In the end, you don't have to pick a plank. I choose it because I love the simplicity of the concept and enjoy all the health benefits it brings. Choose something that puts you face to face with the Black Fog. Choose something that allows you to expand your own Comfort Zone each and every single day. 

Unleash the True Power of the Mind

Because if you don't, you let your mind get fat, lazy and sloppy in the Comfort Zone. The Comfort Zone is doing you no favors. Your subjects cater to your every whim and whisper exactly what you want to hear. They tell you that you are the greatest. Your ideas are the best. You are always right. Are you an Emperor who isn't wearing clothes? Don't you want to really know what you are capable of? Drop the bootlickers and see what you can truly accomplish when you set your mind to something. Truly, your mind is capable of so much more than just consumption and gluttony. 

Don't believe me? You probably don't think you can hold a 15-minute plank right now. 

Well you are wrong. You definitely can. You have the ability. Your mind just chooses not to exercise that ability. 

How do I know this? Because I was lied to. The first time I seriously did a plank in search for my limits, I was supposed to only do it for 7-minutes. My mind was prepared for this and ready to face the challenge.

In the void created by pain while planking, I had no sense of time. I was at the mercy of another, who I thought would be a trustworthy timer. I knew time slowed down when doing unsavory tasks, but I never imagined it could be that slow! She told me to not worry… that I was almost there. Just a minute more or so. My mind was none the wiser and I simply powered through. I powered and powered and gritted my teeth and told myself that one minute was nothing but a few quick seconds put together. 

In my mind, a minute had long past. Maybe even two or three now. I wasn't sure. My entire body was on fire and my brain felt like melted mush, the kind of stuff your ice cream turns into when you ignore it. I look up at my timer and the grin on her face told me everything I needed to know. God damn it. 

In the end, she pushed me over 11-minutes. I was furious. But also amazed I had blasted beyond my goals. Curious to try it again, I paid it forward and tricked my friend similarly, pushing him past 15-minutes on his first try.

You'd be similarly amazed at what you can do too. Like I said, the Comfort Zone masks your true potential. 

After all, if someone offered to give you a million dollars to hold a fifteen-minute plank, would you be able to do it?

Alternatively, if someone put a gun to your head and said that they would kill you and your entire family unless you did a fifteen-minute plank right now, would you be able to do it?

Of course you would. With a strong enough purpose and the right mindset, you can pretty much achieve anything.

Live in the Black Fog of the Unknown

“Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”

- Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)

Mental stamina, fortitude, grit - whatever you want to call it — is something that has to be built and trained just like any other ability. While more difficult to see compared to traditional physical prowess, it is arguably the most important trait needed for success. 

Pain is omnipresent in life and especially so when in pursuit of our goals. We can only take so much of it before we crumble. Most battles are fought and won in the mind after all. How much do you think you can reasonably handle? Wouldn't you want to be able to increase this skill if given the chance? How would your life change if you had more power in this department?

To me, the plank is something much more than an ab workout. It represents the ability to titrate and control the pain the mind receives on a daily basis in a way where you can only get stronger and there is no virtually no downside. Side effects include shredded six-pack abs and an iron spartan-like brain ready to face any future challenge life may throw at you. I mean, c'mon, you're basically being given a cheat code to life here.

And it only takes a few minutes a day? There's no excuse for not doing this.

Okay fine, so it builds mental stamina, works out a bunch of muscle groups, gives me better posture, burns more calories than any traditional exercises, saves me time, empowers me with the confidence to face all difficulties in my life and helps lost puppies find their way home… I get it. It's amazing. But it still doesn't make doing one any easier. It's ungodly painful!

How do I get started?

How do you actually plank for 15-minutes a day?

In short, there are just three rules.

1. The Minimum is Non-Negotiable

2. Power of Graduated Difficulty

3. Sweetened Suffering

What is the bare minimum you can guarantee to achieve each and every day when planking? 1-second? 10-seconds? That's all perfectly fine! No shame in that.

Just to ensure we have some numbers to work with, let's say the number for you is 30 seconds.

Note that even if you just follow the first rule - The Minimum is Non-Negotiable - and hold a thirty second plank every single day for the rest of your life, you'd already be miles ahead of the pack.

This is your foundation. This is your ground zero. You can only grow from here.

The Power of Graduated Difficulty determines your progress from here. How fast you want to grow determines where you set your ramp.

The ramp I chose for myself was 5 seconds. The ramp is the amount of time you increase your plank time by each day. So if I had started at 30 seconds today, I will hold a plank for 35 seconds tomorrow and 40 seconds for the day after that.

The idea behind the ramp is that 5-seconds is a negligible difference in difficulty. If I could hold a 30-second plank without much difficulty, what difference would a 35-second plank make? 

Not much, especially if I've been blasting my core with 30-seconds for a few weeks in a row. Once you raise your time though, your minimum is raised forever. This 35-second plank is now the minimum for each day and according to the first rule, these 35-seconds are non-negotiable.

As you can see based on this highly scientific graph, there is a direct correlation between the degree of success in your goals and the days spent consistently on task. The longer you keep this streak going, the higher you will climb. It basically becomes a rule of law.

15 minutes takes about 900 seconds.

Starting at 30-seconds with a 5-second ramp each day, it will take you 174 days to ramp up to 15-minutes. That's about 6 months. Completely achievable.

How quickly you want to ramp up is entirely up to you. Do you want to increase your time each day? Every other day? Once a week? How much do you want to increase it by? 2-seconds per day? 2-seconds every other day? Whatever you choose, make sure it is sustainable and gradual. 

Slow and steady wins the race. The power of this technique is to pick an interval where your body barely notices the increase in difficulty. That is what builds longevity. The power of graduated difficulty relies on your body's natural ability to strengthen over time and your mind's natural inability to differentiate between very similar timeframes.

And with any goal or task, if you give it enough time, you will eventually hit a breakthrough that supercharges your progress. You never know when that point may be. It may come in a month or maybe in a year. You can't predict this but its arrival is certain. Stay with a task consistent enough and you will without a doubt, gain new insights you did not have before. Remember, dedicating consistent time to a problem lets your brain know how important this is to you. 

And you definitely want your brain to know. There's all sorts of hidden brain processes you want to tap into. Use that deep well of unconscious brainpower to your advantage.

We don't know how this supercomputer works really. But we do know is if we give it the right inputs and persistently ask it to do something, it will use its creative juices to get it done. Those eureka moments in the shower? That's your brain finally figuring something out its been processing in the background. To have more of those, you need your brain to stay focused. You need to repeat the task each and every day.

Remember how difficult deep learning is? You are forging new neural networks and building an identity around this habit.

Unleash The True Power of the Brain

Use the power of the mind AND the power of the brain to get to your goals. Make your brain work for you full-time in the background… even when you are unconscious. Your best friend is your brain after all. Who else works for you when you sleep and take the night off? In fact, sleep is a HUGE important factor in all of your endeavors. Don't skip on out on that step.

With all those new brain cells you've now connected and those new high-speed networks you've hooked up, who knows what you'll discover. 

For me and planking, my breakthrough was the third technique, the power of Sweetened Suffering. 

There seems to be a universal law where all things that are bad for you end up feeling good whereas all things that are good for you, feel bad. Classic examples include foods that clog your arteries (eg fried chicken slathered in extra butter and bacon bits) while food you’re supposed to eat like broccoli and green beans taste like dry cardboard. 

If you are in that camp, news flash… you simply just don't know how to cook vegetables.

Planks are the same. If planks are downright painful and torturous for you, you haven't been using the third technique of Sweetened Suffering.

The trick with this technique depends on your faithfulness and discipline. Pick an activity that you really enjoy; something that gives you a huge dopamine rush just from thinking about it. Now make a promise to yourself that you can no longer do this said activity unless you are in the plank position. End of discussion. The more you enjoy this said activity, the more powerful this technique becomes.

For me, it was a mobile game called Clash Royale. I found I could easily play it while in the plank position and it distracted me completely. Minutes would go by just like that. Because I never played the game outside of the plank position, it became not only a reminder to plank everyday (because I really wanted to play), my brain soon associated the rewards and excitement of the game with planking itself!

Just like Pavlov's dog, conditioned over time to salivate at the mere sound of a bell, my brain was conditioned to associate planking with the rush of playing Clash Royale. As a result, I found myself actually looking forward to planking each and every day!

Just remember to respect your hard-earned conditioning. Don't break the spell by enjoying your activity outside of the plank position. 

I don't care what you use. You like to smoke? Only smoke when you plank. Crack cocaine? Perfect. Snort up like it’s Christmas morning. Turn your vices into virtues. Harness their power and domesticate their raw motivational strength in pursuit of your goals. 

In the end, the plank is a metaphor for all goals in life. You will always have some sort of Black Fog around you. It is your responsibility to deal with it. With consistency, a sustainable game plan and a few incentives to push you forward, there should be nothing standing in your way.