Is there a plank timer that watches your form?

Yes. Pushup RPG times a plank with the phone camera and stops the clock when your form goes, rather than running regardless like a stopwatch. It checks that you are horizontal rather than upright, that your torso is level rather than sagging or piking, and that your legs are straight when it can see them.

Does a plank count as reps in Pushup RPG?

No. A plank is credited in seconds and never converts into reps at any rate. Two figures are kept: your lifetime seconds held, and your longest single unbroken hold. The longest hold is deliberately not the session total, because six holds of thirty seconds is not a three-minute plank.

What happens if I break the plank?

The timer pauses and keeps every second you already earned — it does not reset. Getting back into position resumes from where you stopped. The clock starts again after 8 consecutive good readings, and it takes 10 consecutive bad readings to break a hold in the first place, so a single wobble will not end your set.

How does the app tell me anything when I am face down in a plank?

It speaks and it plays a tone, because you cannot see the screen. It says when it has found you, when it cannot see you, and when the clock has stopped, and a descending two-note sound plays when it loses track. The cues work with the phone on silent, and they play even if you have turned the app's spoken coaching off — a plank has no other feedback channel.

Does the plank earn XP or count on a leaderboard?

No. The plank is a free solo training mode: it does not fight the campaign, earns no XP, gold or loot for the work itself, appears on no leaderboard, and is not written to Apple Health. It does keep your daily streak alive, and since the streak is shared across all movements, a milestone crossed on a plank-only day pays out normally.

Is there a maximum plank length?

No maximum hold, no session limit and no daily cap. Credit truncates to whole seconds, so a second you did not finish holding is never credited. The screen also keeps the phone from sleeping mid-hold.

A Plank Timer That Watches Your Form, Not Just the Clock

A stopwatch cannot tell whether you are still in a plank. It counts the same whether you are holding a straight line or lying on the floor scrolling. A camera plank timer watches your body and stops when your form goes — which makes the number it gives you mean something a stopwatch's never can.

Disclosure, up front: pushup.quest is published by the makers of Pushup RPG, a free camera counter on iPhone and Android. The plank arrived in version 2.4.1. What follows is how ours works; other apps vary and most do not publish their rules.

Seconds, never reps

Start with the thing that trips people up. A plank is credited in seconds, and it never converts into reps at any exchange rate. It does not add to a rep total, it does not become damage, and there is no hidden conversion. Two numbers are kept: your lifetime seconds held, and your longest single unbroken hold.

That second number is deliberately not your session total. Six holds of thirty seconds is not a three-minute plank, and recording it as one would give you a personal best you never actually held.

What the camera checks

Three things have to agree before a frame counts as a plank:

You are horizontal, not upright. There is a ceiling on how vertical your body can read before the frame is rejected — this is what catches standing up or sitting back.
Your torso is level. A band on the tilt between shoulders and hips catches both sagging and piking, from either direction.
Your legs are straight, if it can see them. A knee bent past roughly a right angle marks the frame bad. If your legs are out of frame, or the camera cannot resolve them this instant, the leg check abstains — it never votes against you on evidence it does not have.

One detail worth knowing if you normally use knee pushups: the plank screen ignores that preference and applies the stricter setting regardless, so a knee-mode player does not inherit a gate loose enough to pass a kneel.

Starting and breaking

The clock starts after 8 consecutive good readings and breaks after 10 consecutive bad ones. It is deliberately harder to break a hold than to start one — a wobble or a single bad frame will not end your set.

When a hold breaks, the timer pauses. It does not reset. Every second you already earned is kept, and getting back into position resumes from where you stopped. There is no pause button on the screen because breaking the hold is the pause.

Credit truncates rather than rounds, so a second you did not finish holding is never credited to you. There is no maximum hold, no session limit and no daily cap.

The problem with a plank, and what to do about it

You hold a plank face down. You cannot watch the screen, which means every visual cue an app might give you is useless at exactly the moment you need it.

So the plank screen talks. It speaks when it finds you, when it loses you, and when the clock stops — "Got you. Hold it.", "I can't see you. Stand the phone up at your side, level with your waist.", "The clock stopped. Get back into a straight line." — and a descending two-note tone plays when it loses track of you.

Two things we made sure of, because a cue you cannot hear is not a cue. It works with the phone on silent, and it speaks even if you have the app's spoken coaching turned off. That second one is a deliberate override: turning off coaching for battles should not silently disable the only feedback channel a plank has.

To be precise about one thing: the broken-hold sound and the lost-tracking sound are the same tone, played at different moments. We are not going to claim you can tell them apart by ear, because you cannot.

Losing tracking is not the same as breaking form

A frame where the camera simply cannot read your body is not counted against you — it produces no verdict at all rather than a bad one. But the clock only pays out while a reading is fresh: after about a second without one it stops crediting time, and after two and a half seconds the hold ends outright and you have to earn those 8 good readings again.

Walking out of frame therefore ends a hold after a couple of seconds rather than instantly. Backgrounding the app banks what you earned and stops the clock.

What the plank does not do

The plank is a solo training mode. It does not fight the campaign, it never earns XP, gold or loot for the work itself, it reaches no leaderboard, and it is not written to Apple Health. A plank-only day also leaves your Stats activity grid blank for that day, because that grid counts pushups and squats.

What it does is keep your daily streak alive, and the streak is shared across every movement — so a plank-only day still counts as a day trained, and a streak milestone crossed on one pays out exactly as it would otherwise. It is free, with nothing behind a membership.

If you want the movements that fight, those are pushups and squats — count squats with your phone camera covers how the squat detector judges a rep, and count sit-ups with your phone camera does the same for sit-ups.

A plank should be effort in the abdominals, not pain in the lower back or shoulders. Sharp pain is a reason to come down and see a clinician, not something to hold through.

Not medical advice. This is general fitness information, not a diagnosis or treatment plan. Stop if you feel sharp joint pain rather than muscle fatigue, and check with a qualified professional before starting a new exercise programme — especially if you're injured, pregnant, or managing a health condition.