Get Fit (And Don’t Die) First Month Goal: Burpees

I ran the Tuxedo Ridge Spartan Sprint yesterday. A Sprint can be anywhere from 3-5 miles, and from all accounts this particular race was 4.7 miles (without taking into account certain obstacles that use distance ie: the bucket and sandbag carry). It's not just the distance, hills or obstacles with Spartan Races. If you fail at an obstacle, you have to do 30 burpees.

Obviously, there are people who won't do them, and it's up to you to police yourself. Elite runners will be disqualified if they skip their burpees, as there is money on the line and official race standings can be impacted.

The Tuxedo Spartan is always a tough event, and it seems to get tougher every year. This year, however, we had a wacky interruption. I had just passed the 1 mile marker when we were pulled off the mountain, due to a lightning warning from a storm in the area. We were off the mountain for about an hour and restarted at the last place we were on the field.

Unless you were living under a rock, that MONSTER thunderstorm that rolled through southern Orange County yesterday flooded more than a few places, including the parking lot for the race. Spartan Races actually pulled people off the mountain AGAIN because of the weather and cancelled the rest of the race several hours later. It was a bonkers scene. Thankfully my friends and myself got out before the deluge hit.

I'll have a bigger write up and a video up later in the week, but in honor of the beating the Tuxedo Ridge Spartan put on us, this months goal is 3,000 burpees.

A burpee is a squat into a plank position, a push up, a jump back into squat and as you stand up, a jump with both hands in the air. Don't feel bad if you feel like an idiot when you first try them and crash out. We all do.

It SCORCHES you. And I mean everything. Arms, chest, legs, lungs. And it's phenomenal for you. 10 fast pace burpees does the same thing to your metabolism as a 30 second all out sprint.

So, for my first months goal I'm going to do at least 3,000 of the damn things. There's 30 days in June. 100 per day. If I slack one day, I need to finish up the missed reps by the end of the week.

There's a bunch of ways to commit to this. You can do 10 burpee sets of 10 at random times of the day. You can slow down and burn out 25 at a time over the course of an hour. Or you can grind out 50-100 in one shot. I'll be starting with ripping through 10 sets of 10 for the first week, just trying to up my metabolism. I might go longer and push to higher numbered sets as the month goes on, but I'll figure that out later.

You can follow this dude on YouTube for some exercise instruction. He's easy to understand, and kills it with proper form.