Hello everyone, my name is Caitlin Wood and over the last 32 days, I’ve done 1,600 Burpees. Yes, you’ve read that correctly. 1,600… Burpees… Have I lost my mind? Perhaps. But none the less, this is a fact.
Some of you reading may not know what a burpee is so I’ll give a quick explanation.
(Sidenote: I made 2 short videos of me doing a burpee, but WordPress doesn’t support videos, so I screen shotted stills)
Step One:
Stand tall.
Step Two:
Hands to the ground.
Step Three:
Shoot your legs back into a plank like postion.
Step Four:
Chest to the ground.
Step Five:
“Push up”
Step Six:
Jump your feet forward, heels to the ground.
Step Seven:
Jump straight up, vertically, hands over head.
Step Eight:
Repeat and/or cry in a ball in a corner, because you’ve just done a burpee and will likely be made to do more.
(At least that’s how I do them lol)
Why you may ask? Why on God’s green earth did I do this many Burpee’s. Well, I’ll tell you.
There are a few reasons really.
One being that when it comes to weightlifting or running you are able to receive real, tangible evidence on improvement. For example, in running you can attempt interval training between 5k’s and see how that affects your time in the second event. Rarely, do people test something that sucks and that they hate because it’s more just something you do when you have to do it, so I decided to take what I hated the most and see of I could improve on it.
Second being that I was genuinely curious about the positive effects of something we all hate such as the burpee. Burpees have (and still aren’t) a favorite of mine. I do not look forward to the days where burpees are included in the daily workout. I don’t lay awake at night dreaming about PRing my burpees. So if I was going to work on self improvement I figured start with what I hate. With running you can see your self slim down and take on more cardiovascular challenges with less hassle. With squats you can see certain leg muscles develop etc. So, while I’m sure there are plenty of articles on the positive affects burpees have on the human body, there is no test subject I prefer than my own body.
So on August 28th, I began my own personal challenge of adding 50 burpees per day to my daily routine.
But, why do just plain old burpees, that’s right folks, I found a way to make the almighty burpee worse.
Weighted Burpees…
I wore a 14 pound vest for 30 days of this challenge.
I began by timing my 50 burpees, sans vest, on day one. I got a score of 5:27. Not a notably impressive time, but as I mentioned before, this has never been a strength of mine.
For the next 30 days I continued doing 50 burpees per day wearing a standard female 14# weight vest. I would like to say this was absolutely brutal. But, nothing worth having comes easy and so with this vest I begrudgingly walked out to the garage everyday and used it as a warm up (or cool down) to my workout.
My times in those 30 days ranged from 6:28 to 7:57.
Then on September 28th, the true judgement day, I retested my 50 burpees without the vest, and got a score of 4:19.
That’s a difference of 1:08. Again, these aren’t fantastic times, but for me it was one hell of an improvement!
There were also some other notable changes.
As I said before, all I did was add these 50 weighted burpees to my routine. I workout at Crossfit Tritown (where we did MORE burpees) or in my garage at least 5 days a week, I work as a CCA at the Post Office, and I like to think I eat a relatively healthy diet, nothing too strict, but just do my best to make decent choices.
During the 32 days I went out a few nights (weighted hungover burpees were horrific), didn’t get as much sleep as I should’ve on others, definitely forgot to drink enough water, accepted free shots, you know all the usual stuff.
As for the changes, I weighed myself, checked my BMI, and body fat percentage (I used Omron Fat Loss Monitor) on the day I started. However, to quote, my favorite movie of all time, A League of Their Own, “A lady reveals nothing.” So without the actual numbers being stated, I will state the differences, and the ONLY change in my life over the last 32 days was the burpees, I lost 10.5 pounds, my BMI went down 1.5, and my body fat decreased 3%.
That was an exciting change because sometimes when you really bust your ass and are trying hard and there are no changes to the scale or your clothes don’t feel any different it can be discouraging. I personally had felt at a standstill with that for about a month or two. So to take less than 10 minutes out of my day to do something I absolutely hate, but get these positive results is something I would do a million times.
So, that being said, burpees are important and can help our body in all sorts of ways. I will continue to hate these things, I will continue to do them, and I will definitely continue to complain.
Thanks for reading if you got this far! Who knows what my personal challenge will be next? Maybe I’ll have finally mastered double unders by Thanksgiving? If I find out there will definitely be a post so you will too!
Thanks Ryan!
P.S. if anyone ever wants to borrow the vest to attempt this fucking challenge, let me know, I don’t want to see that thing for a while…
squatornot 