I have successfully reclaimed my Guinness World Records title for “Longest duration balancing an object on the head” with a 2 hour 36 minute 6 second run of balancing a 2 lb 9 oz garden hoe on my head.

This record is a war of attrition. Once you can balance a light (ish) object on your head for over 20 minutes it comes down to physical and mental stamina. How long are you going to go?

I rotate between 3 main positions to prevent cramping in the neck and back muscles: 1) arms folded across the chest which provides support to the ribs holding up the spine 2) arms on the hips, also providing support but not quite as much, and 3) arms behind the neck to work out the muscles in the neck.

After over 2.5 hours I’d had enough and I took the hoe off my forehead. I walked around like an old man for a while since my bones felt like they were fused together, but I’m happy with the result. The yellow patch on my forehead disappeared after a couple of hours as well.

This is the stuff fantasies are made of: a beautiful woman, saran wrap…. and my wife is breaking a World record with me (evidence submitted and pending official approval).

We first broke the record for the fastest time to wrap a person in cling/plastic wrap almost 2 years ago. It took a dozen attempts plus practices and we were able to shave 2 seconds off the previous mark of 1 minute 59 seconds. This time we were even more prepared. We learned a lot from the last attempts and I’ve been waiting for the day someone else broke our record. It happened and so it was time to reclaim it. Their time was 1 minute 29 seconds knocking nearly 30 seconds off our record. It took another 9 rolls of plastic food wrap, multiple attempts and practices per roll, and a couple of near misses with small patches not covered on her body, but this time we finally got it down to 1 minute, 2.44 seconds. Unwrapping took 55 seconds. 

In case you think there are huge improvements to be made on the technique, the arms and legs must be wrapped individually and the wrap can’t rip or tear or the attempt is disqualified. I still think there is some room for improvement so I’ll be waiting for the next challenger to take on this record. And then I may be faster wrapping than unwrapping!

Previous attempt:

Mike and I have reclaimed the first Guinness World Record’s title we broke together (pending approval).

After breaking our inaugural joint Guinness World Record’s title of most behind-the-back flying disc catches in one minute of 51, beating the previous mark of 37 and Brodie Smith’s mark of 31, our record was broken by a couple of players from Japan of 55. We think they were on a pro team there.

In the meantime, we broke the record for most behind-the-back catches in one hour with 2,173 averaging more than 36 per minute. After our record was broken, we decided to get serious about practice. As a juggler, I have a lot of practice catching things, and as a cometittve league ultimate captain, Mike has a lot of practice throwing discs. That combined with several practice sessions with dozens of discs in his backyard, we were ready to reclaim this record. We’re pretty sure we’ve taken more than 6,000 throws and catch attempts in total.

We spend a good 30-45 minutes of attempts to take back our record with the full crew in place including Mike’s son chasing the caught discs. Our best attempt of 68 in a minute was disqualified since I stepped over the 15 foot line 4 times when we reviewed it on video. On our final attempt we had 69 throws in one minute. I only dropped one throw and there was only one bad throw that hit the ground before it crossed the 15 foot mark. We ended up with 67 behind the back flying disc catches in one minute crushing the previous mark of 55. We were pretty happy about the result but we think we can get over 70 but we’ll wait until someone else challenges us to go after it.

Good luck!

Jonathan and I have retaken our grape slicing fruit ninja Guinness World Records title once again.

This was the Swiss exercise ball variety.

The first time we broke it a couple of years ago we were thrilled to nearly double the record for the most grapes sliced in one minute while standing on a Swiss exercise ball with 37. That mark was broken by a run of 55 in a minute by another team. We came back and sliced 59 grapes in one minute. Technically we got 60, but one of them was disqualified since it was thrown before the previous grape was either sliced or hit the ground. 66 grapes were thrown, 60 were sliced through, and 59 counted.

This is one of the most dangerous records I’ve done because not only is the samurai sword razor-sharp and has a very pointy end, the Swiss ball is extremely difficult to balance on, and swinging a sword either up or down over 130 times in one minute to slice a fast-moving small grape is an effort ripe with difficulty.

Jonathan “Hollywood” Hannon and I finally officially hold the Guinness World Records title for “Fastest time to bounce a ping pong ball in 5 cups (team of two)”.

You might be asking: “Didn’t you already break that record?” And the answer is, we’ve tried, and in fact, I’ve tried twice. But both times the attempts were disqualified. There is a very specific and strict rule that the ball has to be in the glass before the next ball can be bounced. We thought we were following the rules but slow motion (or frame by frame analysis) can reveal what’s not possible to see in real time.

We tried this one over and over. There were so many times we thought we’d broke the record this time around. It sounded good, it looked good, the time was good. And then we’d watch it back in super slow motion and see that one ball wasn’t quite in the glass and the next ball was already out of the hand.

I have officially retaken one of my original Guinness World Record titles from 2017. At the Oak Brooke Public library outside Chicago I balance a pool cue on my forehead for 1 hour 3 minutes 14 seconds. A performer out of the UK broke it several years later over doubling it with a time of 2 hours 15 minutes 19 seconds.

I took this one one not sure how long I would go. I was certainly planning to beat it but I wasn’t sure by how much. It’s a rather painful record to break with aches in the neck and back and it’s usually a matter of how long I want to endure the pain.

The catch was I made the record attempt in a confined space and after I broke the record I let myself relax. It wouldn’t normally have been a problem but I had to take a small step back but that was enough that I ran into the wall behind me. I couldn’t correct the balance. The cue fell after 2 hours 16 minutes 20 seconds.

I didn’t realize how disoriented I was until I tried to get off the wall and realized I was too dizzy to stop holding on to the wall to keep my balance. After several seconds, I did finally get my neck to move and was able to take a step forward but I was dizzy for a while after this one.

I had a divot in my forehead for a good hour from the pool cue but it was my neck that was hurting for the longest after this one.

This weekend was a big one for Jonathan “Hollywood” Hannon’s wife Lisa Marie. It wasn’t because she broke her very first Guinness World Record (pending approval) (which you can watch here), it’s because she graduated from her accelerated nursing program. Congratulations!

To break this record I had to round up 5 other people who would be willing to sit on balloons to burst them and who would be safe to hang out within an open garage during a pandemic: insert my wife Jennifer, my neighbor Seth, my neighbor who just graduated, and her family.

Ryan Gerulf, Lisa Marie Hannon, and Christina Hatfield all broke their first Guinness World Record’s title while Seth Lemmons, Jennifer Rush are veterans at record-breaking. I positioned the balloons on the chairs and they each sat on two to burst them (without using their hands). It took several tries because the balloon didn’t burst, a supply balloon burst, or I failed to get them grabbed and positioned properly. After several practice runs we were able to demolish the previous record for the fastest time to burst ten balloons (team of six) of 13.04 seconds for with a new mark is 9.56 seconds.

This is the second time I’ve attempted to break this record. The first ended up being disqualified on a small technicality (but legitimately so).

I tried to do this one with my two little boys a few times but surprisingly the person catching the leis being active makes it much easier. I also tried with my wife for a while but she lost interest after who knows how long. Insert Hollywood Hannon. It took many many tries and a fair amount of experimentation but we finally came up with a technique that allowed us to crush the previous record of 5 leis tossed from one person to another in 3.18 seconds.

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/415634-fastest-time-to-throw-and-catch-five-flower-leis-team-of-two

I kept a hoe balanced on my chin for over an hour and 41 minutes. In doing so, my nose and I reclaimed the Guinness World Records title for the longest duration balancing an object on nose.

The first time I broke this record in 2017 the record stood at about 30 minutes. I went 40. It has seen been broken a time or two and stood at about 1 hour 30 minutes. Besides the pain of having to look up for over an hour and a half, there are a couple of other things to deal with on this one. The first is that the object must weigh over 2.5 lbs so it can’t be a light object. As the nose is mostly made of soft cartridge it deforms under the pressure of the object. This is not only painful, as the nose deforms the balance point of the object moves on the nose. If it gets too far to the slide it’ll slide off. Additionally, if the balance starts to go and you have to move quickly to keep the nose under the center of gravity, the risk of falling off dramatically increases.

I stood for most of the attempt, but after an hour and 37 minutes, I had my wife bring me a chair and sat for the last 3 minutes, at which point the hoe tipped to the side and touched the wall ending the attempt.