ANYONE can be mentally tough. It's easy.

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.