I am relatively active as far as physical fitness is concerned and I think that if i really focused and decided to keep the pain at bay I maybe could do 100 situps. Well, Dale's abs were in slightly better shape than my own becuase he did 140 times as many and then a few extra just to show off.
The Year was 1965
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A then 17-year old Cummings had recently set a record at his local YMCA completing 250 consecutive sit-ups with relative ease. Since he hadn't even considered the 250 to be even remotely difficult he decided to research what the current world record was.
I wonder if it broke his heart a little bit to discover that the current world record in 1965 was 14 THOUSAND sit-ups.
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young Dale was determined!
Personally, I would have run away if it had been one thousand sit-ups but Dale was a different sort of athlete apparently. He began training in his dorm room and slowly found his endurance improving.
Prior to the actual event, he chose to spend 3 days without any sleep, or food and water. He also ran close to 20 miles. I can't imagine what the reasoning behind this was but apparently it worked.
On the evening of the 29th of November Dale and a group of witnesses gathered in the local YMCA at 11pm to being his chase to situp greatness. The entire ordeal took 12 hours and Dale lost 8 pounds during the night. While he was doing the sit ups he never took a break and drank only water and some orange juice. By 11am the following morning he had done 14,118 full situps under the watchful eye of officials.
I can't really imagine doing anything for 12 hours other than sleeping. I can't imagine doing situps for more than about 30 seconds in a row. Dale Cummings is a truly unusual physical specimen.
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Dale now owns and operates a successful construction firm in Dawson, Georgia. He seems like a humble dude, because according to those around him, he rarely talks about his world-record. But that might be because it has been beaten many times since then. It's unlikely that Dale will have another go at it since he is currently 71 years old.
Why is his record so special then? This particular record-setter was so special because Dale was not really an athlete at the time, and at a mere 17 years of age he was considered a bit of a superman. Also, he was quite secretive about attempting to break the record because according to him, he wasn't sure he could do it.
Well buddy, you could have failed and it still would have impressed me since in the gym i struggle to do 30 in a row and even that makes my back hurt quite a bit! It all happened 54 years ago today.