100 Day Burpee Challenge: Day 101

Five-thousand-fifty burpees! To think this all started on August 1st with one burpee. And now it's over.

Some of you are probably saying, "Whew! We don't have to listen to Lou talk about the damn burpees anymore." Or "Um, you didn't really have to tell me every day how many burpees you did before shift." Now it's gonna be more like, "Hey it's over. Quit talking about it."

I am tired. My legs are fatigued. All the jumping has given my knees what any 3 months straight of high-impact training would. I suffered from "burpees on the brain" throughout the whole season...plagued with squeezing them in even on busy days. My two-a-days are done (PWO and Burpee Challenge going on simultaneously). Only one WO per day now! And best of all, I get an actual day of rest today....haven't seen one of those since JULY!

Thanks to Ann M for organizing this challenge. Here is the link to her page. She did a great job getting everyone together online for this. Let's never do it again. By the way, she did her last 100 in only 6:51. Friggen awesome. Puts my 16:08 to shame! To put it another way, on average, she did approx 1 burpee each 4 seconds for 7 minutes. I did a pace of 1 burpee each 10 seconds for 16 minutes.

But seriously, if you didn't do it this time around, consider starting now. It was a great experience, and I never regret committing to it. Do 1 burpee today, 2 tomorrow, 3 the next day.....I think you get the idea.

100 Day Burpee Challenge: Day 87

It's been a LONG challenge.

I pick this Day 87 as a benchmark, as we are within the 2-week mark....only 13 days remaining. Also, we have completed more than 75% of the total burpee repetitions!  

I am tired. I have been doing the 100 Day Burpee Challenge since August 1st.  I have skipped only three days, and made them up the following day. Those were for: a half-marathon, a 10-hr adventure race, and a 16-mile backpacking hike on vacation.  I feel pretty proud about keeping up with the totals day in and day out.  Then on Day 74, I began the 30-day Prison Workout.  I've been doing double-duty with burpees in the morning and the PWO in the afternoon/evening.  

My strategy with the burpees is this: knock them out!  I hear tales of other participants spreading them out throughout the day. I hear of them setting 60-minute alarms, and dropping where ever they are to do 10 burpees.  I hear of planned rest days, only to catch up the next day with a huge number.  On the few days I didn't do them all at the crack of dawn, I felt the "burden of burpees" all day until I finished them.  I'm sticking with my strategy.

One way I've been doing them is: find three different spots to switch up the scenery. I use my work's gym, a meeting room, and a hallway.  I do 5 burpees at each station. It gives me about a 30-sec rest to walk between each station. I keep my journal with tick marks at one station and make sure I don't lose count.  The mental imagery of 85 burpees is more daunting than 17 stops at the stations.  Something easier about reaching 17 than 85!

Another way I've done them is: set a repeating alarm for 2 or 3 minutes. While checking email, watching television, cooking dinner, or doing laundry..... drop and do 5 burpees when the alarm sounds. My watch actually has a counter for how many cycles it's gone through, so I don't even have to keep count!  It takes a bit longer, but the short rest is welcomed.

I have been quite surprised to see my progress throughout these weeks.  I never would have guessed I could have done all these daily burpee repetitions so quickly, with as little rest as I have been allotting.  With the gradual increase in numbers, it has allowed me to gain the stamina and repeated explosiveness of such high numbers. The gradual increase has also given me the confidence in my abilities. The complete absence of recovery days has beat me down from time to time, but overall the experience has been super!

Well, November 8th is my last day of the challenge. So, since I'm the guy designing the PWO, guess what?  Plan on November 8th's daily PWO being "100 burpees, for time." And remember.....Nov 9th......Rest.

For those of you participating in a 100 Day Burpee Challenge, whether on Ann M's schedule like me, or whether you started later (I know some of you are in Day 40's), please post a quick note to let everyone know about your experiences.

100 Day Burpee Challenge: Day 71

You might ask, "Why an update on the fairly insignificant Day 71?" Oh, how mistaken you are!

Day 71 itself is not the benchmark.....rather what was accomplished on this day. According to Ann M's schedule, we hit the summit. We just reached the point where the remaining number of burpees is LESS than half of the 5,050 total.

Total done: 2,556

Total remaining: 2,494

This is truly a milestone that needs to be celebrated. We will now finish in 29 days what it has taken us 71 to accomplish. Like I've said before....bigger bites.

Congrats to all who have made it this far. It's all downhill now (yeah right!).

Burpee Challenge: Half done? Not really!

Challenge coordinator Ann M has been using each 10th day as a milestone, as seen in her motivating reports.  I see this 50th day as even more special. It is a turn of events!

I've been waiting for Day 50 since August 1st. It signifies a real change.  For starters, if you look at the schedule, you'd see that Day 51 begins another column....something new.  Concerning duration: we are halfway through the total number of days. Concerning repetition numbers: we are a quarter through the total of 5,050 burpees.  And Day 51 begins a trend where we are doing more than the daily average of 50 (5,050 divided by 100 is equal to 50 per day)....each day we get exponentially closer to the end.

If you look at this Burpee Challenge as a mountain, we started at the top and began hiking down. Easy at first. Today, we are standing at the foot of that mountain.  And now we climb up! The easy part is over.  The climb up means longer burpee sessions, and probably more heavily fatigued limbs. But with each day, we are taking an even BIGGER bite out of the total number. That's exciting.

Over the past few weeks as numbers rose, I began changing my strategies. I began to do more integration of burpees into circuits. I did rounds of burpees, air squats, and back extensions. I also did rounds of burpees and rowing, or burpees and pullups. Even as of late, I was doing sets of 5 or 10, then walking across the yard or room and doing another set, until I hit the day's goal. Sometimes I've been cramming all the burpees into a pre-workout warmup, and other days I find myself doing the "Oh crap it's almost midnight, I better whip these out." 

I haven't missed a day since Labor Day (AKA: Day 32).  I ran that half marathon, and quickly decided I'd make up those reps on Tuesday. With the approach of the Midwest Monster adventure race, I think I'll be adding another make-up day that weekend.

Anyways, I hear of more and more 100 Day Burpee Challenges popping up around the country. Seems like there's groups all over the place in various stages of agony. I'm glad to be at that halfway point. And like I've been saying:

November 9th. Day 101: ZERO.

Exercise of the Week: Burpees

The BURPEE is pretty intense for a movement without equipment!

The BURPEE integrates bending over, a kick, holding a plank position, a pushup, an abduction, squatting up, and a jump!! That's a pretty good laundry list of functional movement, and it's all wrapped up into a cardiovascular package.

I pick this exercise this week for two main reasons:

1. I can't stop thinking about them (with my participation in the 100 Day Burpee Challenge)

2. The Prison Workout...exercises that require no or the most basic equipment and a minimum of floor space.

Enjoy!!

100 Day Burpee Challenge: Day 25

After 25 days I can see this is going to get more and more difficult, more quickly than I originally thought. According to Ann M's schedule, we've done 325 total burpees, with a remaining balance of 4725!! Now for the math:

We are 25% done with regards to number of days.

We are only 6.8% done with the work.

This is a little depressing. I keep reminding myself that as each day dawns, I take a bigger bite outta the cookie. But still...to balance this with half marathon and adventure race training, it's more than mildly affecting my training and REST schedule.

Tomorrow: 26.

Wednesday: 27.

100 Day Burpee Challenge

Our friends Tom M and Ann M are promoting a 100 Day Burpee Challenge. Here's a link to their website.

Here's the challenge: Start TWO DAYS AGO with one burpee (yeah I know I'm posting late, but Tom and Ann got it to me late so blame them!). Add one burpee each day until you do 100 burpees on November 8th!! Since we're getting a late start, anyone beginning after August 1st must "buy in." I just "bought in" with my 6 burpees for the past few days' worth, so I'm good to go with my 4 tomorrow.

The burpee form standard is posted here. Many people conveniently forget that pushup at the bottom!

Send Ann an email at ann@magdziasz.com so she can put your name on the list of participants.

Post Script: OK, so I'm thinking that 100 burpees isn't all that big of a deal....then I realized that this is after a day of 99, after a day of 98, after a day of 97....you get my point. This is going to be a wicked 97 more days!