I Did Burpees Every Day for A Year and Here’s What Happened
Exercise stresses me out.
I grew up with at-home workout videos, gym classes with country line dancing, and team sports that picked me last.
So, trying to find time in my 30s (and now 40s) for regular exercise just felt like one more to-do I had to check.
This mindset is debilitating if you are trying to be more active.
So, how did I de-stress exercise? I took the guesswork out of it. And I blame David Goggins wholeheartedly for this revelation.
Jesse Itzler wrote a book called “Living with a SEAL.” In the book, he describes David Goggins’s burpee habit: to wake them up, get a quick sweat in, or just because there was nothing better to do.
That sounded like freedom. Fitness freedom.
Fitness freedom is treating the world like your gym. You don’t need equipment, you don’t need a membership, you don’t need anything but a floor, a little energy, and determination.
No more “which tape to put on?”
No more “Should I do yoga, HIIT, cardio, or strength?”
No more guesswork. No more indecision. And no more negotiating myself out of it.
I would wake up and do some burpees.
Some days, it took five minutes; others, it took 15. But it was always a doable amount in an achievable timeframe.
And that was my exercise for the day, done.
Eventually, I added on. I’d find excuses to do burpees, like during off-camera Zoom meetings that could have been emails.
And over a year, I learned to do 100 burpees in 20 minutes.
And now, I teach Fitness Freedom to others.
So, what did this experience prove? That fitness freedom is entirely achievable. Exercise does not and should not be a significant stress in life. And the more people learn this, the happier and healthier we will be.
