Perfecting your plank form is more than just a fitness challenge—it’s a way to make day-to-day activities smoother.
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Planks are highly esteemed by many fitness experts for their ability to engage nearly every major muscle group. This simple exercise targets your obliques, rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, shoulders, back, legs, and glutes simultaneously. By improving both core strength and functional fitness, planks enhance muscle endurance, assisting in routine tasks such as lifting and carrying.
Intrigued by the benefits of planks? It might be time to see how long you can hold one. Matt Kasee, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and the founder of Trilogy Fitness Systems, claims that if you can maintain a plank beyond a certain threshold at the age of 60, you’re ahead of 90% of your peers in core strength. Ready to see where you stand?
What Daily Tasks Can Become Easier When Someone Has Good Core Strength and Endurance?
Kasee explains that your core is central to nearly all your movements, providing crucial stability for your spine and facilitating force transfer between the upper and lower body. With robust core strength, everyday actions—like carrying groceries, getting out of bed, climbing stairs, gardening, lifting objects, and reaching for items—become controlled and effortless.
“It also becomes important when you’re reacting to something unexpected. If you stumble, change direction quickly, or have to catch or stabilize yourself, your core helps you control your body,” Kasee tells us. “That’s why core training should be thought of as much more than developing visible abs. You’re building the ability to create and maintain stability while the rest of your body moves around it, and that becomes increasingly important as we age.”
What Plank Hold Benchmarks Reveal About Overall Fitness
If you’re able to hold a plank with perfect form for the prescribed time, this shows a solid baseline of core endurance and that you can maintain trunk control under load. However, it doesn’t mean you’re “universally fit,” Kasee stresses.
“A plank doesn’t measure cardiovascular fitness, lower-body strength, mobility, balance, power, or overall muscle mass. That’s why I wouldn’t use any single exercise as a complete assessment of someone’s fitness,” Kasee explains. “Think of the plank as one data point. If you can hold one with excellent form for 30 to 60 seconds, that’s a positive sign. But you still want to look at how well you move, how strong you are, how much endurance you have, and how capable you feel performing everyday activities.”
What Plank-Hold Time Is a Strong Benchmark for Someone Over 60?
Being able to hold a well-executed plank for approximately 30 to 60 seconds is a great benchmark to strive for. That said, the quality of the hold matters much more than the duration.
“A good plank means maintaining a neutral spine, keeping the hips from sagging or rising, creating tension through the core and glutes, and continuing to breathe normally,” Kasee says. “If someone’s form starts breaking down at 20 seconds, holding on for another 40 seconds isn’t necessarily providing additional benefit.”
This benchmark is useful because it reveals a reasonable level of core endurance and preserving trunk stability under tension.
“But the goal shouldn’t be to chase longer and longer plank times just for the sake of reaching a number,” Kasee adds.
How To Progress
Once you’re able to hold a plank with proper form within that 30 to 60-second benchmark, it doesn’t make sense to continue adding time. Kasee recommends revving up the challenge in other ways.
“You can progress to variations like shoulder taps, plank reaches, side planks, or exercises that introduce controlled movement while requiring the core to remain stable,” he shares. “You can also change leverage or add a small amount of resistance when appropriate. The goal is to make the core resist movement rather than simply seeing how long you can stay in one position. Think of the basic plank as foundational. Once you’ve demonstrated that you can create and maintain that stability, the next step is learning to maintain it while adding movement or additional resistance.”