Southern Alberta’s World-Record Holder Has a Message About Aging

When Donna Jean Wilde broke her arm about 15 years ago, she was devastated. A lifelong runner and fitness enthusiast, she suddenly found herself unable to do many of the activities she loved.

But the Southern Alberta woman discovered something she could still do, even with a cast on her arm: plank.  At first, she could hold the position for only a minute or a minute and a half. She began practising every morning, often reading something on her phone at the same time. Gradually, the minutes added up.

Fifteen years later, Wilde is a world-record holder who can hold an abdominal plank for five hours. The record is only part of her story. In an in-depth interview with Unison TV, she also talks about perseverance, lifelong learning, how her record-breaking began and why she believes older adults should never underestimate what they can accomplish.

Wilde lives in Welling, a small hamlet south of Lethbridge. She is a retired teacher, farmer, mother of five and grandmother. Her path to international recognition was not something she planned.

“I just fell in love with planking,” she says. “It sounds so crazy. I know it does.”

What started as a way to stay active during recovery became part of nearly every day.

She planked while preparing school lessons, writing emails and working on her master’s degree. She even wrote an entire book while holding the position.

Over time, she became capable of planking for hours. After about a decade, her family suggested she consider trying to break a world record.

In March 2024, she broke the Guinness World Records mark for the longest abdominal plank by a woman. While training for that achievement, she also began doing more push-ups. Six months later, she broke a push-up world record as well.

For Wilde, the records show what can happen when small actions become consistent habits.

“Repeated behaviours create amazing things if we just keep at doing whatever it is we want to do,” she says.

Five hours of determination

Breaking a record takes concentration, patience and the willingness to keep going when it gets uncomfortable. Wilde found that out firsthand during her five-hour plank at the Huntsman World Senior Games in Utah this fall.

The atmosphere was different from practising at home. The lights, the heat and the pressure of being watched by judges all made it harder. At one point, her feet began slipping.

She had already passed her previous record of four hours and 30 minutes when she hit a difficult stretch.

“The last 10 minutes. It was definitely life or death right there. I was hanging on,” she recalls.

Her goal was to reach five hours.

The crowd helped. Spectators began chanting, “We don’t stop. We don’t stop.” That carried her through the final minutes.

She also had a photograph of her grandchildren tucked beneath the platform.

“I thought, OK. They’re here with me,” she says.

Mental preparation matters to Wilde. She explored it during her teaching career in Magrath and while completing her master’s degree, which included studying brain and behaviour.

She became interested in visualization and the ways people can train themselves to concentrate and respond to difficult situations.

Wilde says she learned to focus on her breathing, relax as much as possible and pay attention to her form. Music also helps her concentrate.

She compares it to running a marathon, where athletes must find a rhythm and learn to manage their effort over time.

A different path through life

Wilde came to teaching later in life.

She married young and had five children between the ages of 20 and 25, including twins. Although she had always wanted to attend university, raising her family meant putting that ambition on hold.

She eventually returned to school when her oldest daughter began university.

Wilde started her teaching career as a mature student in her early 40s. She had worked as an educational assistant and went on to discover how much she loved teaching.

Being older than many of her fellow students gave her a different perspective. By the time she entered the classroom as a teacher, she was already a mother and grandmother.

She says she loved her students as though they were her own grandchildren.

Her own experience shaped how she helped young people through hard times. She became interested in practical strategies for getting through difficult days, including personal toolkits filled with simple things that offer comfort or encouragement.

Those tools might include a walk, something inspirational to read, uplifting music or a call to someone you love.

The idea is to prepare positive habits and resources before a difficult moment arrives.

“We can plan what kind of day you’re going to have,” Wilde says. “We don’t know what’s going to hit us, but we know how we’re going to react because we can plan for that.”

She still lives by that philosophy.

What aging can make possible

At 61, Wilde says she feels energetic and eager to stay active. She still runs, though her routine now mixes walking and running. She also does hundreds of push-ups and plank daily.

She believes building core strength helps her maintain good posture and supports the other activities she enjoys.

She doesn’t expect everyone to take on extreme physical challenges. She encourages people to identify what matters to them and keep making room for it.

“Whatever it is you love to do, just keep doing it,” she says. “You have to plan for it and take the time and then you just feel so good.”

For Wilde, growing older can bring experience, perspective and a clearer understanding of what matters.

“I really think as we age, we somehow mature and realize what we can do,” she says. “We have a lot of experience and a lot of love and a lot of emotion and all of that I think is very helpful.”

She is also inspired by the older adults she meets through the Huntsman World Senior Games, where thousands of seniors take part in everything from track and field to pickleball and tennis.

Their achievements challenge assumptions about what it means to be a senior.

“The world is that way now,” she says. “People are seeing being a senior as different. Now it’s a time to become better”

The story behind the record

Wilde says breaking a world record was never a personal goal. She is grateful that an injury led her to something that has become such an important part of her life.

She hopes her experience encourages others to pursue their own interests, surround themselves with people who want to grow and remember that new skills are possible at any age.

Not everyone will hold a plank for five hours, but meaningful accomplishments don’t need to begin with big ambitions. Sometimes they begin with a single minute, repeated day after day. For one woman from a small Southern Alberta hamlet, those minutes led to a world record.

Watch the full in-depth interview with Donna Jean Wilde on Unison TV, where the stories of older adults go beyond the headlines to explore the people, experiences and perspectives behind them.