Unleash the Monkey Army

I was lucky enough to get some coverage in the Bristol Post at the end of this latest burpee journey. The headline, and most of the comments I have had from people have focused on the 71,500 total burpees. The attention has been nice although a little odd since it simply doesn't feel like that big a deal. Let me clarify that. It isn't some sort of false modesty or humble brag. Truly. Firstly, the fact that I can do it, and have done it, strips the mystery away. It means that it is doable. And it is doable by the average, I would say normal but I think most people would miss the statistical nuance and focus on the fact that a predilection for burpees is anything but normal! Where was I? Oh yes, if it is doable then its achievement does not merit much more than a tick in the box and confirmatory nod. Second, I'm embarrassed by some of the suggestions of my fitness. Certainly that has inevitably improved in the last 12 months but other than that, I feel a bit of a fraud....

A lot has changed in the last twelve months. But in other ways not much! This time last year I was barely more than a week away from cracking the 100-day burpee ladder. Yes, in twelve months I have not managed to kick my burpee habit! On 29th December 2012 I reached a decision about trying to round out the total reps for the 100 days to 6,000. In order to achieve that I had to amplify my daily burpee count. That day I did 250 and on the 31st I did 257. I remember feeling a) pretty pleased with myself and, b) pretty destroyed! Between that point and the end of the ladder , on January 8th, I only did more than 200 burpees twice more. A year later and I am routinely doing 280 burpees per day. And that is only extra burpees to the tune of single digits! Not only that, but because of what can best be described as another of my f£$%ing bright ideas, I am working my way through the 12 burpees of Christmas. 12 Burpees of Christmas?! Well, like the traditional carol, my tr...

I've noticed something int he lads I train over the years. Well, I've noticed many things but for their peace of mind I'm going to keep this piece about the burpees! It is the same thing that I have seen in a lot of photos on the internet of people doing burpees. Instructional pictures are quite clear, the finishing position is upright. Sounds straightforward enough (or straightuppish enough) but as with many thing in life, it is not always as straightforward as the textbooks would have you believe. I've said before, I'm not actually that bothered about whether you finish your burpee with a jump or with your hands overhead or at your sides. As long as you finish upright, I'm a happy bunny (everything is relative). What I see a lot of though, is the tendency to fail to open the hips at the top of the movement, and that is what I am talking about. I think it comes about because the head does not lead (and I mean that in both senses). And, the individua...

Being a little bit geeky I have a whiteboard and markers at home. I have used it to keep track of my numbers - which has been especially important as the year has gone on! (I am pretty certain that by the end of the year my dreams will be decorated with tally charts and punctuated by the beep of the timer.) I have tended to make some incidental notes on the whiteboards as the mental juices start to flow but these incidental notes have been wiped off almost daily, otherwise I have kept a running view of up to three weeks. Last Sunday (when I first journalled this piece), the day signalled the end of week 37 and coincided with the end of space on the whiteboard. As I wiped it off the thought occurred to me that maybe there ought to be a hint of sadness at the ease with which that much works is cleared away. But actually I found it quite satisfying, having done the work, to set up a clean sheet for the next phase. The sweeping away of a footprint doesn't remove the fact of the...

Somebody close to me suggested to me that my last blog post was a little sad. Sorry about that! That was not the intention but it probably fell victim to two different quirks of being one of my piece's of work: While I do tend to overthink stuff, as a proportion of the time spent thinking, the thinking prior to doing anything or writing anything is miniscule! On the bright side, this means I can crack on with things pretty quickly and without too much baggage to weigh me down (at least, at the beginning, like a tourist, my bags fill up along the way as I collect duty free and tacky souvenirs!).The downside is that I only ever have the loosest sense of what the end point will look like. Which might be why I can attend to triumph and disaster with about the same level of attachment. I don't re-read this stuff before I post it. That's the joy of the internet! Aside from porn and religion, the internet gives us a facility to belch out our every cognitive air biscuit with o...

End of November. Eight months done. It's quite satisfying to write that. I know I have been going for a while, certainly it feels like ages. Counting down the days as I have been keeps the journey ticking along but they are just numbers and, if I'm honest, it feels like measuring a long road-trip by the lamp-posts you drive past. But to write 8 months is like being given a gift that you weren't expecting! It is only two-thirds done but four months to go seems within arm's reach. OK, maybe for a gibbon rather than a T-Rex but nonetheless it is within sight. One of the things that I had not expected on this voyage was the down-times. Given my constant fight to keep the darkness pushed to the back corners of my mind, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did. There are many things that contribute to its exacerbation - sleep and nutrition are two crucial components in keeping the hormones in check. Recovery, mobility and tissue work would not hurt ei...

Ordinary people leading ordinary lives. We look for the extraordinary out there to give us a sense of something more than this. But quite often we end up putting our faith in the witless, the feckless, the pointless, believing them to be something more as a result of how we come to be aware of them. Glossy and distant it seems is better than gritty and close to hand. Familiarity breeds contempt? A prophet in his homeland? Or perhaps that people on our level make us think too much about our own part in all this... Even in the drab ordinariness of it all we plant and nurture the seeds of the very thing that could lead to our own accomplishment of something grand if we would but just point in that direction. Our ability to confront and endure a job; a relationship; a friendship; a life which by all accounts is manifestly unfair and beneath us should give us a sense of pride. OK, so it is not a fate borne with good grace but while not stoic, it is an endurance that most would not ...

"And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst'" William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4 scene i We're in to week 26 now, and have racked up over 16,500 burpees in the year to date (since 1st April). When I say it out loud it seems, by equal turn, a trifle and a ludicrous thing. I tend to do my burpees in one session and, depending on what the day throws at me, there are days when I feel pretty flat before I start. Calvin and Hobbes by the outstanding Bill Watterson It is close to unbelievable to think that I have come this far. It is not that I ever thought that I wouldn't, but that is down to a lack of imagination rather than a devastating self-confidence. I'm still firmly of the belief that the single biggest danger to this endeavour is my almost limitless capacity to be distracted by something shiny and have a pop at another challenge along the way.  A case in point. No need, just no need! ...

The numbers are nudging up. My predilection for rounding up has seen me rattle along the tracks, past 11,000 for the year to date. That's more than 900 more than double regulation in the 100-day challenge which I completed in January.  There are days when I am stiffer and achier than others. On those days the burpees start wooden and clunky, you know, like watching Kristen Stewart "act". However, so far at least, even at its worst the first 50 seem to knock the rust off. My in-laws stayed with us for a week during the period since the last blog post and I can't decide whether it is a sign of everything else they have going on at the moment, or more that over the last 17 years of knowing me they have developed a high threshold for concern. Even after wandering into the utility room midway through my double-bill day (280, thanks to an accidental night off the day before), or even enduring the edifying sight of watching me sit still for 30 minutes afterwards with the...

We're getting a little more interest in the burpee year, quite unbelievably! I say "we" with no sense of dissembling at all. The interest has little to do with me and more to do with all you closet nutters out there spreading the word to your friends. Which is brilliant! I'm not sure whether it should be worrying or reassuring that this appeals to you lot, but I am looking forward to your company over the coming months. Some people are new to the idea of burpees, some not so new but trying to get their head around the ladder. Some just like their life made easier (true, they're assuming more of a voyeuristic role in this exercise, but it is all good). So, while it is all on these pages so far, to help all of y'all, I have added an extra page as a primer . I have put links to relevant previous posts on there and will add links to more on there as I find/write more content. Burpee Primer Hope it is of use. But, since this is becoming decreasingly about me,...

Amongst many of the common reactions to my predilection for burpees, the best is a variation on the "what the heck is a burpee?" theme. I can't pinpoint when I first became aware of them. There's a pretty good chance it was a PE teacher. If not, certainly one of the former bootnecks who I seem to have gravitated towards at various points. Certainly a couple of books in my pt library (which, barring a few older titles spans the last 30 years) mention them. But what are they? They are a slice of exercise fried-gold served on a bed of awesomeness with a side order of cardio effect! Ok, enough with the hyperbole! I have seen them called squat thrusts, although not often, as those represent a different exercise in their own right, similar, but different. A squat thrust begins and ends in a squat position with your hands on the floor. You then extend your legs out backwards until you have a straight line from your ankles to your shoulders, and return to the starting pos...