Hanging on for a world record at 81

This month Bonnie Sumner set a Guinness World Record for the longest dead hang by a woman over 80.

Bonnie is 81 and lives in Colorado. She married Mark in 1963 and they had four kids.

Although she was used to hiking in the hills near where they lived, she only started strength training in a gym in 2016 (i.e. when she was about 71). Mark started a few years later.

He died from cancer in December 2023, and early the following year she went back to her weight training.

In mid-2024 she read about dead hanging — hanging from a bar by your hands. She tried it and managed 21 seconds. That’s impressive. Most of us would struggle to last five seconds on our first go.

She kept practicing, even though she has arthritis in her hands, and around 12 months ago she hung for 2:01 minutes.

At that point she checked the world record for her age group and discovered that it was just over two minutes. Now she had it in her sights and trained for another year before taking it on.

Earlier this month she went for the record and hung for 3:03 minutes.

(True confession: I practice hanging as part of my regular gym routine, but I decided long ago that 30 seconds is plenty for me. I have no idea a) how she lasted six times longer, and b) how anyone does it with arthritic hands.)

Afterwards, she said she’d had so many things in life she couldn’t control, and challenges she had to meet whether she liked it or not, but “this is control. I love that, and I know I can do it.”

There are a couple of points worth making about Bonnie’s hanging feat, I think.

One is that we can always get stronger, and dead hanging (or a gentler version where we keep our feet on the ground but still take some weight) is an excellent exercise for improving grip strength. So are many dumbbell and kettlebell exercises.

Even if we’re not excited by the idea of hanging from a bar, there are lots of ways to improve our back, shoulder, arm and hand strength. It takes learning to do exercises properly and doing them consistently.

The second point is Bonnie’s grit. This was an act of sheer determination: nobody’s genetically blessed with hanging skills.

How many older people do we hear complaining about their age? Plenty. But you can bet Bonnie Sumner’s not one of them.

Photo Source: The New York Times