In March of 2014, I came upon
this blog post by Ross Enamait, one of my all time favorite as well as one of the most inspirational trainers I know (look him up on youtube doing the ab wheel, pushups and jumping rope). The post featured a woman named Nikki who had just completed a 100 burpee a day for a year challenge, and it details everything about that journey in her life. Her transformation from beginning to end was absolutely incredible. Seriously, go watch her video, I'll wait.
Amazing, wasn't it?? A couple years earlier, I had completed a 100 day burpee challenge with Lisa, one of my kickboxers. Rather than do the usual challenge of starting at 1 the first day, then 2 the second all the way up to 100 on the last day, I actually started with 100 the first day, 101 the second, 102 the third, all the way up to 200 on the last day. It was definitely difficult, and while it felt great to be done, I also liked how I felt over the course of the challenge while I did them. The door to another challenge was left open, I just didn't know when I'd go through it.
Spring forward again to March 2014. I had just seen this post about Nikki and her accomplishment, and I thought I just might be able to pull that off myself. I told a few people about it and kept putting off my start date, but I eventually I decided that June 1, 2014 was the day I would officially begin. 100 burpees a day. Every day. For an entire year. It was on....
I wish I had kept a better record of this past year like Nikki did, but unfortunately I didn't, so I'm left to reflect on what I remember over the past 365 days. Here are some things that stick out in my mind:
Getting Started
It took awhile to get used to doing a lot of burpees again. I generally did sets of 10 over the course of the day. When I could, I tried to do them close together and get them done. Many times, I was up past 11:00 trying to peel myself off the couch to reach my quota before midnight (that was my self imposed rule, do them all by midnight each day). When I felt good, I would string longer sets together. Sometimes I did them within my workouts or after a run. In the summer of 2014, I hiked several 14ers, and the burpees I did on those days were always exceptionally difficult, but I did them. I often did them before and after my kickboxing classes, many times with a student or two there to sweat along with me. Whatever felt right that day, that is how I would do them.
Health
I knew there would be some luck involved around being sick. People asked what if I had to miss a day? Would I just make them up later? I honestly didn't know, and I hoped I wouldn't have to ever make that decision because I really wanted to do the entire year without skipping even one day. I had one particularly difficult couple of days where I struggled to get out of bed because of a particularly bad cold or flu, but I still managed to do groups of 2-5 through those days to get 100. It was pitiful, and those were the worst days of the year but they taught me that my strong will to succeed can overcome much more adversity than I gave myself credit for, and I didn't miss even one day.
Injuries
Injuries were another worry, and I got lucky there as well. I remember one incident in particular where I was coming up from a pushup and my right shoulder completely gave out on me. I could barely move it and figured if that didn't get better really quickly I was done, but it did in fact go away almost as quickly as it came (within a couple of hours) and I'm still not sure what exactly it was I did but it didn't stop me. I'm also fortunate that I have an exceptional physical therapist and massage therapist in Brenda and Jill in my kickboxing classes, and I went to them from time to time to help me work out some kinks.
Burpee Mile
By September 2014 I was feeling good and wanted to try a little extra, so I went to the Rec Center in hopes of completing a burpee mile. Now a couple years prior, I had gone to a local track to see how burpees over a distance would feel and hoped to go maybe 400 meters. I went about 100 and was toast, so I had no idea what to expect after a few months of 100 per day.
An hour and 35 minutes and 580 burpees later, I was done, though, and it was much easier than I expected. Burpee mile - check.
Burpee 5K (Lake Mac)
On to December 2014. I was feeling really good, I was approaching the halfway point, and I had been thinking about another crazy goal of mine, a 5k distance burpee set around Lake Macintosh here in Longmont. I thought for awhile that that would be a great way to finish my challenge, but then I thought what happens if something didn't work out that day, like I was sick or injured or the weather just sucked? On December 7, the day was exceptionally perfect and I was completely healthy, so I headed out to try to burpee around the lake. And in just over
6 hours, after 1915 burpees, I had completed the 5k+ around the lake. My immediate next goal was to make it the 5 mile drive home without losing my breakfast all over the road before I got there, and needless to say I did not quite accomplish that goal. My apologies to the people on Antero Drive.
Approaching 40,000
I continued to cruise along for the next several months. Seven months down. Eight down. Nine. Ten. About that time I thought it would be interesting to add up my total for the year, including the mile and 5K I had done. If I completed my 100 a day for the year, it would put me just about 1200 short of 40,000. Now 1200 is a lot of burpees, but in the course of doing 580 and 1900, 1200 suddenly didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. And I was never going to be this close again, so I decided to go for it.
Rather than just add in a few extra for the rest of my 100/day, I decided I would rather just do them all during one day and get them over with. This would also be a great opportunity to see how quickly I was able to do a large set of them. And on May 28th, just three days before my year long challenge was over, I did them. My goal was to do 10 per minute for as long as I was able to maintain, hopefully for 2 hours that would get me right to my goal of 1200. I manged to do 25 sets of 10 before I had to rest beyond the minute, and I was able to get to 500 in 59:52. Not bad.
My next goal was to hit 1000 in 2 hours, but after a couple minutes of rest, my next set made me realize there was no way I could keep up that pace. I still managed to complete 1000 in 2:27:53, which was about an hour and ten minutes faster than I had done a thousand of them a couple years prior, so a significant improvement that I was really pleased with. The pressure was off now, and I slowly chipped away at the final 200 (206 to be exact) plus my regular 100 over the next several hours. When all was said and done, I had done 1306 burpees. If you ever want to know exactly which muscles are activated along the entire range of motion of an exercise, do about a thousand of them, and it will become painfully obvious, let me assure you.
Here are my last 10. And no, the other 39,991 of them were not done with nearly this much enthusiasm. ;)
Lessons Learned
The question I was asked the most about this challenge was simply "why?". There are certainly many reasons, but a few stand out. First, Nikki's story really inspired and motivated me to push myself to do something huge, so maybe I'll be able to pass that on to someone else to try something they didn't know if they could do. For example, my wife, who can run forever but could count the number of burpees she's done in her life on one hand, is months into her own 25 burpee a day challenge. I'd like to think that at least some of the motivation to start that came from me. :)
Honestly, I didn't know if I would be able to complete this when I started. 100 burpees a day, if spread over the course of a day, is really not as difficult to pull off as one might think. The kicker was going to be the relentlessness of doing it for an entire year, and having the discipline to do it on days where it was the last thing I wanted to do. I am the world's biggest wuss when I'm sick, and I figured one bout of the flu like I've had in the past would knock me out, but I stayed relatively healthy and I pushed through the few times I did get a little sick. There was definitely a luck factor that I would have little control over, and I was fortunate that I had good luck the entire year.
Ross Enamait sums it up best in his blog:
In summary, I am not sharing this story to suggest that everyone should perform burpees each day. Instead, look past the specifics and focus on what is truly important. Nikki is a tremendous example of hard work and commitment. Her willingness to consistently hold herself accountable is something that most could benefit from. Hopefully her example will inspire others to make similar changes if they have failed in previous attempts.
Accountability is the key word. Every day I had to figure out when I would be able to get in 100, and many times it was not convenient but I knew I had to make it work. I look back at the total numbers and am really psyched because I think they look pretty impressive as a whole. But when you boil it down, that may average about 20 minutes of work per day. Lay down and jump up ten times. That may take anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. Rest an HOUR. By then you are completely recovered, and doing another 10 is not problem. And that is the point. The steps themselves don't have to be difficult, but being able to do them consistently over and over and over again is what is the hardest for most people.
40,001 Burpees?
So why 40,001? The extra one is to symbolize that if you dig deep, you can find the strength to do that little extra. Like Spinal Tap's amplifiers...these go to 11. It's in there, you just have to push yourself to let it out. You came this far, what is one more step?
A good friend once told me that you can't stop time, and eventually the trial will come to an end. If your goal takes a sustained effort, you focus on the individual steps, one step at a time, and eventually time will take you to that goal if you don't stop taking those individual steps. Doesn't matter if it is burpees or hiking, the end result is success.
So to all who have encouraged me this past year, I am forever grateful for your support. You've inspired me in many ways, and I hope I can give a little of that back. Consider this challenge officially, and successfully, ended.
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