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[Applause] [Music]
This is not a fitness video. This is actually a video about your brain and invisible limits we all cage ourselves with. The truth is this that there are no real limits.
I've been planking 15 to 30 minutes straight for the past 10 years every single day. That's almost 1,000 hours total. 10 years ago, I could barely hold a single minute. Since then, sure, my abs have gone stronger, but what's changed the most is actually my mind. Not just in some woo woo, I'm more tough now kind of way. I'm talking real neurobiological changes in my brain that give me increased mental stamina, increased energy, and overall improved neuroplasticity.
I'm going to show you how and why you should have started this years ago, how to make it easy, and the neuroscience behind it all. Oh, and yeah, that's right. I'm going to be doing this entire video in the plank position.
First of all, why the plank? It's without a doubt one of the best exercises you could do. What else hits almost every muscle you own, improves your spine health, your posture, and acts as a force multiplier for everything else like balance, running, and lifting. There's minimal risk for injury, and it's infinitely scalable for longer holds and increase weight. But despite all that, the real reason why I love the plank is because it's actually not a physical exercise at all. It's 90% a mental one.
BDNF, brain derived neurotrphic factor. That's a million dollar growth factor that floods your brain when you plank. You want to cure almost every neurodeenerative disease out there. Figure out how to turn this into a pill and you'll win the Nobel Prize. BDNF increases the lifespan of your brain cells, promotes neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area critical for memory and learning, and increases synaptic plasticity. This means your brain cells can talk to each other and form connections much more easily. This ultimately leads to stronger, more flexible brain networks overall, which means you learn faster, face stress better, become less anxious and depressed overall. Don't just take my word for it. I'm just a random doctor from Harvard. Just look at all the research that's out there.
And so in this moment, as I hold the plank, when I'm teeing with all this brain fertilizer, I have an entire mental routine I run through. In this routine, I focus all this extra brain power to spec to specifically grow the most important meta skills of life. Agency, mental toughness, and emotional resilience. Let me explain how.
For decades, no one thought running a 4-minute mile was possible. Doctors, coaches, scientists, they all claimed the human body couldn't handle this train. That is until 1954 when a medical student named Roger Banister, who trained during lunch breaks between hospital shifts, casually broke the barrier at her small race in Oxford. And just like that, within a year, multiple people were able to crush four minutes when in the entire previous history of mankind, not a single person could do it before. What happened? Did humans suddenly evolve in 1954? No. What changed was just belief. The realization that it was possible. That's agency. The belief that as long as something doesn't break the laws of physics, it's possible. Not just in general, but for you specifically. That's why the first few minutes of my plank is reserved for training agency. I think to myself, for whatever reason, most people put limits on themselves, but not I. Most people live inside their tiny comfort zones, spend their entire lives suffocating this bubble, but not me. I'm not dying in this godforsaken bubble. We all have variations the 4-minute mile for ourselves. Unfortunately, there's no random medical student coming to save us. It's up to you. That's why the plank is essential. I tell myself, if I can handle the plank, the most painful exercise to ever exist, I can handle anything. I repeat this mantra in my head. As long as it doesn't defy the laws of physics, I can make it happen. They can put a man on the moon and build a giant metal plane that floats in the sky. The least I can do is hold my fat ass a few inches above the ground.
But there's a problem, right? It's the same problem with most workouts. It's hard to be consistent, especially for an exercise that is as painful as this one. That's where I was 10 years ago trying to figure it out. Luckily, I stumbled upon the solution. Scientists have actually been studying this same problem for the past 30 years. They've studied burn victims, chronic pain patients, even people undergoing major lifealtering surgeries. How do you help someone effectively deal with neverending unrelenting pain? Distraction. And just any distraction, distractions that engage your brain, distractions that engage your senses, distractions engage your very emotions. That's why the very best form of distraction is actually a video game. In this study, subjects were asked to put their hands in freezing ice water. Those that were playing a video game while doing so had significantly higher pain tolerance, a lower perception of pain, significantly less anxiety, and a much more willingness to repeat the same painful task. Sounds awesome, right?
But I took it one step further. I call it Pavlov's two rules. One, the game you choose must be incredibly addicting. And two, the game can only be played in the plank position. When you plank, BDNF is circulating like crazy. And so your brain becomes like play-doh. Its neurons ready to be molded and shaped to your heart's content. Maximum neuroplasticity. Whatever you now do in this state, whatever you now learn is going to be 10 times easier, 10 times more sticky, 10 times more memorable. That's why it's in this exact state that you one blast your reward centers like crazy, two, numb the pain of the plank and three specifically associate the act of planking with these highly active reward centers. Because you never play unless you're doing a plank. Your brain begins to think of the plank not as a bad thing, but as a good thing, as the only key it has to unlock the reward it so desperately wants. In other words, by following Pavo's two rules, you end up not only craving the plank, you become addicted to it. Is that not insane? To become addicted to the most painful exercise possible, all while minimizing the pain you feel during it. It's pure genius.
But interestingly enough, I took it yet one more step further. While I still reserve the last half of the plank to this method and play Clash Royale on my phone to keep Pavlov's two rules alive, I balance this with the strangest desire of them all. I want to actually feel the pain. It sounds crazy, but consider the goal here. It's not just to train my abs. It's to train my mind. But I'm distracting the mind. Sure, I successfully do the plank. But what's supposed to be a mental exercise turns purely into a physical one. That kills 90% of the benefit right there. You don't just want a jacked body. You want a jacked brain.
Just like calcuses form on your hands from repeated use, mental calces form on your brain from repeated exposure to more difficult and painful tasks. Scientists call this exposure therapy or stress inoculation training. Studies show that gradually exposing yourself to the physical and psychological stress builds tolerance and desensitizes the brain. This reduces the fear response and significantly improves resilience overall. That's why the first half of the plank is actually done naked. No phone, no music, no distractions, no games. But it's not just bearing the pain and suffering with silence. I run through some very specific mental training exercises. Again, BDNF is powering all of this. So, your brain is very receptive to what you do in this stain.
First rule of the plank. No negativity whatsoever. Reframe everything with positive self-talk. I don't know if I can do this is reframe to I can do this. I can do this is in refrain to I am doing this because you literally are. Every second you hold is further evidence that you are indeed doing it. Evidence you then store away and what David Gogggins calls his mental cookie jar. When life gets especially tough, you reach into that cookie jar and recall prior successes to fuel yourself in the moment. A technique called resilience priming. Each day's plank primes your resilience for the next. I'm doing this becomes of course I can do this because I've already done it before. My cookie jars filled with daily proof. That's why the second rule, the plank is what I call the better than yesterday rule. Every time you plank, you always add a few seconds. If you plank 60 seconds yesterday, you then plank for 65 seconds today. You already know it's possible because you already did it yesterday. What's a few seconds about rounding error? Each day's plank is just another cookie used to power your ability to swallow a slightly bigger cookie tomorrow. This is how you eat an elephant one slightly bigger bite at a time.
I have an entire system that I keep track of this with one button on the multi-timer app. Everything is set. It beeps let me know when to switch from the naked plank to the reward plank. Remembers how much I've done each day and tracks how much I planked in my entire lifetime. I then swiped to another board for studying which keeps track of my pomodoros and total studying time. For YouTube, I switch to a third board. What you track is what you improve, right? I then sync everything to a notion file that updates in real time so your accountability partner can see how awesome you're getting done everything with. With the pro version, you can make as many custom boards as you want, including an entire habit tracker right on your phone at the end of the month. I export out all the data and graph all trends. This app has honestly changed how I approach my day. True gamification at a touch of a button.
Looking at all the most influential papers on the science of mental toughness is a pretty common thread. Number one, getting more mentally tough is indeed possible. Number two, the best way to improve mental toughness is to improve your psychological toolkit. We've already talked about reframing, positive self-t talk, resilience priming, and goal setting. But I haven't yet moment mentioned the most important skill of them all. Emotional resilience through mindfulness training. There's a lot of research on this. They all show consistently same findings. Split a bunch of performance athletes into two groups. One group gets mindfulness training while the second group does nothing special. After 5 to seven weeks, those in the mindfulness group were found to be much more mentally resilient, had higher endurance, and significantly improved cognitive and executive functions overall.
This is another reason why the first half of my plank is naked. Train my autonomic nervous system to make it simple. Sort of like the fight or flight response. Typically, when we feel pain, we enter this mode. Instead of the natural instinct to run, to stop, to get out of the painful situation we find ourselves in, we have to train ourselves instead to stay calm, to relax, to sit with the pain and realize this is actually okay. I'm going to be okay. The best way to do so is to actually embrace the pain and to be curious about it, how it actually feels. Scan my body from head to toe and make note of all the different muscles that are tensing. Which ones hurt the most? What kind of pain am I actually feeling? When you start to really get in tune with the pain, you realize there are actually two parts to this pain. There's the physical pain and interesting enough, the emotional component as well. When you really pay attention, you'll start to realize it's the emotional side of things. It's actually the most painful of them all because the physical pain of the plank is temporary. It immediately stops the moment you stop planking. Never ceases to amaze me. The moment I stop, no matter how bad it was, the sudden flood of relief is almost euphoric. I realized, oh, actually, that wasn't so bad. I was really in no danger at all. But it's the emotional pain that lingers, that haunts you later.
If you do take on this plank challenge, and you really should, it's going to be emotional pain that eventually makes you stop. If you don't, if you do take on this challenge, it's probably emotional pain that's to blame, too. It looks like laziness or lack of discipline, but deep down, it's something else entirely. Fear, anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt. I deal with these voices in my head all the time. It tells me I'm not going to be able to keep this on. Tells me, why start something if you're only just going to give up in that? Do you really want to disappoint yourself again? No matter how hard you work, you're still going to fail. So, why even bother, right? You start running, ruminating, and never ending vortex of negative thought patterns. If you're doing it, if you were planking, before you know it, you've quit. It becomes almost impossible to start again because who wants to confront all those emotional baggages again? This is what people what happens when you let the amygdala the fear centers of your brain run the show. Realize this extends way beyond planking. This poisonous thought process plagues us in almost everything we do. Anything that takes relentless focus and effort over time.
But when you train mindfulness, the thought patterns change completely. You become more aware. You realize it's just a voice in your head. Emotions are just emotions, too. They don't have real power. They come and go, just like physical pain does, except the faucet for emotional pain. Something you have to learn to shut off for yourself. That's why mindfulness during these moments of toughness is extremely important to prevent yourself from getting lost in your own thoughts to stay present to what's actually going on. In the end, physical pain is just physical pain. There's no reason to add a layer of emotional pain on top of this too. Even more amazingly, when you mindfully pay attention, when you truly embrace the physical side of pain and limit the emotional sting of it all, it doesn't even feel that bad anymore. This is the basis of cognitive behavioral training. You get to self-edit your thoughts and question your self-limiting beliefs in real time. All to get closer to the bare naked truth, which is simply this. This physical pain isn't going to kill me. In fact, it's not even a bad thing at all. Physical pain I get to experience is actually a privilege. I should be enjoying this pain, thanking this pain. It's because of pain like this that your abs get to change. But more excitingly, it's why your brain gets to change. You overcoming part of the 1% of people on this planet doing awesome things, unbelievable things, superhuman things. Every second you live in this position is yet another ounce of proof that you belong in this club of extraordinary people. The reward you get to reap from it will simply take your life to the next level. Guaranteed. So take some deep breaths, calm down, stay present in the moment, enjoy every freaking second of this. You got this.
Wow. If you're still here with me now, sign up for the best self-development community known to man. You get to do weekly challenges just like this with me, a bunch of other people to win prizes and change your life at the same time. I'll see you there. [Music]