On a snow-dusted Colorado morning in January, Bonnie Sumner, 81, did a few reps on the assisted pull-up machine, warming up her back muscles.
Wearing floral print spandex shorts and a green sports bra, her task that day was simple but far from easy: hang on a pull-up bar for two minutes and two seconds. If she could do that, she’d earn a Guinness World Record for the longest dead hang by a woman over 80.
Hanging from a pull-up bar is excellent exercise to build grip strength, but it can quickly become grueling and painful. Time slows to a crawl as your hands ache, and then sweat.
“The only thing I worry about is my hands and how much it’s going to hurt,” said Ms. Sumner, who has arthritis. Also, unlike many gym-goers, she always wears her wedding band while she’s hanging.
She keeps it on in memory of her husband of 60 years, Mark, who died in December 2023. The loss upended her world, but Ms. Sumner isn’t a person to lose herself in grief. She approaches life pragmatically, one problem at a time. She planned a funeral, settled her husband’s estate and returned to the gym the next month.
And it was there she discovered a remarkable talent, and two years later, almost by accident, she attempted to break a world record.
A Life Together
Ms. Sumner and Mark both grew up in Queens but met at a summer camp in Pennsylvania as teenagers. They married in 1963, moved to Milwaukee in the early ’70s and had four kids.
Mark was a tax attorney with a dry sense of humor that delighted his stay-at-home wife. “He could just put you in hysterics with a perfectly straight face,” said Ms. Sumner, who retains traces of her New York accent, especially when she says her husband’s name.
Once the kids were out of the house, in 2008, Ms. Sumner persuaded Mark to move to Woodland Park, Colo. They built a mountaintop home with views of Pikes Peak and filled almost two decades together hiking the nearby trails and reading together on the couch.
They also met Eve Lawrence, who first became Ms. Sumner’s trainer and then a close friend. Ms. Sumner never considered herself very athletic, but lifted weights for health reasons and started strength training with Ms. Lawrence in 2016. Mark began a few years later.
Then, one day in late 2023, Mr. Sumner collapsed. It was cancer. For the next three months he was in and out of the hospital. He died on Dec. 23, two days before Christmas. Ms. Sumner was in shock, grieving alone in their home. She took to wearing Mark’s undershirts and his favorite jeans.
In early 2024 she returned to her weekly weight lifting routine. The gym became a refuge from the grim work of widowhood: paperwork, closing up Mark’s business, packing up his clothes.
“I started training her harder than I’d ever trained her,” Ms. Lawrence said. “Because I know what fitness can do for us mentally and emotionally.”
Mastering the Dead Hang
In July of that year, Ms. Sumner read about the health benefits of the dead hang: how it was tied to longevity and could help people perform daily tasks as they aged. She’d never heard of it but wondered how her grip strength measured up after years of shoveling snow.
She brought the article to Ms. Lawrence who agreed to let her try. Most of her clients in their 40s and 50s managed about four seconds on their first attempt — 10 seconds if they were unusually strong.
Ms. Sumner, who is 5-foot-4 and 115 pounds, dangled for 21 seconds.
After that, dead hangs became a part of every session. “When I got 53 seconds, my hands really hurt, and I said, ‘This isn’t fun,’” Ms. Sumner said. But, by her own admission, she has an obstinate streak. “Are you really going to tell me I can’t do three more seconds?” she said.
In February of 2025, she hung for 2:01. At the prodding of the gym’s owner, Ryan Baade, she looked up the dead hang world record for her age group. It was just over two minutes.
So Ms. Sumner started training, adding farmer’s carries, machine rows and bench presses to her routine. She learned that crossing her ankles helped her engage her lower body while she hung. The training became a welcome reprieve from her grief.
“There were so many things I couldn’t control, challenges I had to do whether I liked it or not,” she said. “This is control. I love that, and I know I can do it.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Baade went through the Guinness World Record application process. Her training went so well that soon Ms. Sumner wasn’t just trying to break the record; she was trying to demolish it.
Trying for the Record
Perhaps the biggest challenge during a dead hang is mental, fighting the desire to fixate on the clock. At first, Ms. Sumner focused only on not collapsing in pain from her arthritis. Then she learned to focus on other things: repeatedly counting to 10 or, as the attempt got closer, her outfit and the weather.
On the day of the Guinness attempt earlier this month, Ms. Sumner was regularly hanging for 2:45, but she wanted more.
As she rubbed liquid chalk onto her hands while a crowd of gym regulars began to form, Ms. Lawrence pulled her aside and said: “You will hang for three minutes. You are ready for this. You were made for this.”
Ms. Sumner told the crowd that she needed complete silence. Then she jumped up to the bar, closed her eyes and crossed her feet.
For the first two minutes the only sound was Ms. Lawrence giving 30-second updates. At 2:00, Ms. Sumner’s upper body began to shake, and at 2:22 she said one word: “Ouch.” She could have dropped off then and earned the world record, but Ms. Sumner kept hanging.
At 2:30, Ms. Sumner opened her eyes. She asked Ms. Lawrence to tell her when she’d reached 2:45. Her hands began to slip, but she kept hanging.
Finally, at 3:03, her calf cramping, Ms. Sumner let go and dropped down. She’d beaten the previous time by more than a minute. And just like that, it was over. Ms. Lawrence gave her a hug. Ms. Sumner picked up her water bottle and walked away from the crowd. It was Tuesday, and she had library books to return.
When asked what the record meant to her, she thought for a moment and said, “It’s never too late to begin to make yourself stronger.”
Then she went into the dressing room and quietly changed into Mark’s old jeans.
The post To Set a World Record at 81, All She Had to Do Was Hold On appeared first on New York Times.
