I Hate Burpees, But…

Every month I come up with a list of six habits that I want to make routine for myself. For the most part, for the past 6 months or so, 5 of them have remained unchanged because I think that these are core to what will make me a better person. Those habits are meditation, gratitude journaling, exercise, reading, and drinking 100 oz of water. These are the habits that I know will serve me in the long run. Do I complete each of them every day? No, that would be exhausting. And then the sixth I have changed from month to month based on what my needs may be. For instance, I noticed that I am leaning a little too much on sweets and desserts in the past months, so this month my sixth habit is: not sweets or desserts. This sixth habit I truly try to stick to for the entire month.

And then there are my monthly goals that I set for myself. Among other things, this month I set for myself to complete two more “perfect” days than I had last month. For April, that translates to 20 of 30 days where I will complete all of my traceable habits. I just finished off another of those perfect days of my daily “good habits.” The hardest of them all was definitely the workout. I did not want to do that workout. And not just because the workout itself was difficult, I just didn’t have the energy for it. I really wanted to throw in the towel at every step of the process. 

I say that the workout was tough, but what I really mean is that I hate burpees. Today’s workout was a buy-in of 30 ring rows, followed by five sets of 30 jump ropes and ten burpees, with a cash out of 30 ring rows. The ring rows are what they are. At some point, I will scale them up to some sort of pull-up, but for now, I make them as difficult as I can so that I get something out of them. The single unders are, or should be, easy for me. Again, someday I will scale these up to double-unders, but for now, I just don’t have that in my arsenal. And then there are burpees. I, like 99.9% of anyone who has had them prescribed in a workout, truly despise burpees. And five sets of ten of the devils punishment elicit five times the loathing from me. 

When I say that I didn’t have the energy for this workout, I meant it. I got dressed and thought to myself: Would it be so bad if I just took off my workout clothes, put on some pajamas, and watched TV all afternoon? But I persisted. I wanted to shut off the lights in the garage, go back into the house, and crawl back into bed, and it was the middle of the afternoon. But I pushed forward. I finished the prescribed warm-up and wanted to quit after that. I thought to myself: Self, that warm-up was pretty difficult. You could just end it there and have accomplished your “workout” goal. But I then bullied myself into starting the MetCon. I got into the third set of burpees and said to myself: Holy shit! Why are you punishing yourself like this? They were better to witches in Salem in the 1600s. I still didn’t relent to that inner voice that was urging me to quit. In fact, not only did I complete the workout, but I did both pieces of accessory work. Accessory work is typically extra work on the muscles that you are working on during the MetCon. For instance, today’s accessory work was box jumps (legs from burpees and jump ropes) and bent-over rows (back from the ring rows). 

I’m proud of myself for finishing today’s workout, both because it was difficult and because it’ll make a better person. Part of growing as a person, in my opinion, is taking and completing hard things. Now, this wasn’t hard like running a marathon or writing a book, but it was hard in the moment. Each step of the way, I crossed what Alastair Humphrey had coined the “doorstep mile”: Each time that I wanted to give in and give up, I didn’t; I walked through another “door”. In the Bible, they would say: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I’m not going to imply that I walked a thousand miles today, but I did continue on the journey that will take me a thousand miles from where I am today toward being more fit and healthier.

I am not writing this to toot my own horn, well, not entirely that. What I am trying to impart is the importance of celebrating small victories. Today, I beat the burpees. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I’m not celebrating because I took a podium spot at a local 5K; I am just happy that I didn’t spend that afternoon on the couch. And sometimes that is what it takes: a little bit of celebration, a little bit of chest thumping, a little bit of “ hell yeah” to move along your journey from out of shape to fit, from speaking only one language to being multilingual, from being wherever you are to wherever you want to be. You have to break the mold. You have to change the paradigm in order to get to where you want to be. 

Where I am right now is about 29% body fat; where I want to be is somewhere south of 20%. Those are physical goals that I’ve set for myself, and steps like finishing the god-blessed burpee workout are the steps that I need to get where I want to be. What are your goals? Where do you want to be? What steps do you need to get there?