Photo: Travis Isaacs via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped.
Vegan Joe DeMarco has set a new Guinness World Record at the age of 61, completing 602 toes-to-bar touches in one hour in Wenham, Massachusetts on Monday, March 2, 2026.
The previous record stood at 466. DeMarco had set himself a target of 600 in 60 minutes and went past it, according to BroBible. Guinness World Records says he trained for six months for the attempt and wanted to prove that you can be fit at any age.
If you've never tried a toes-to-bar, you hang from a pull-up bar and lift your feet all the way up to touch it, then lower them under control. Plant Based News calls it an advanced variation on leg raises. DeMarco did roughly ten a minute for an hour.
This isn't his first record either. In 2022, aged 57, he set Guinness marks for the most push-ups in eight hours (15,261) and in 12 hours (21,008). He's a chiropractor, an author and a two-time masters national bodybuilding champion who came back to the stage in 2024 after turning 60.
DeMarco has been vegan since 2017, when his son asked him if he wanted to try a fully plant-based diet. He told Plant Based News:
I agreed, and the 2 of us have never looked back.
He says exercise and a plant-based diet are the keys to "longevity and health", and keeps his cooking simple: all of his protein comes from plants. His view on getting older is refreshingly blunt: "we are all ageless if we take care of our bodies".
DeMarco joins a long line of older plant-powered athletes rewriting what's possible. Pat Reeves broke her own world deadlift record in the 70-74 category, and Team PlantBuilt won 48 golds at Mr. America. As we said back in 2015, you don't need meat to be strong.
Sixty-one and still breaking records. Powered by plants.