22,255

“Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.”

- Crowded House

I turned 55 on March 18th of last year. It had been one hell of year - we’d become empty-nesters but then moved my elderly parents across the country and down the street a couple of days later, I’d been living on airplanes and the pace of work had been brutal (or I’d become less tolerant of it), the remnants of COVID on society were making people behave like assholes and everything seemed more stressful, and I was drinking more than I would have liked as stress relief…

In a fit of seeming-idiocy, I decided I needed to take some ground for myself - to own discomfort and suffering and turn it into my friend. I pledged to do 55 burpees a day for a year.

I made some rules for myself - if I did more than 55 in a day it could count towards my total but any extra could not be rolled over to another day. It had to be full, chest-to-the-ground burpees. And, since I travel a lot, I’d adjust for time zone fuckery, which meant that when I was traveling west I’d sometime do 2 days worth of burpees in 36 hours, but when I was traveling East I’d sometimes do one days worth over 36 hours. And finally, they could be broken up however I wanted throughout the day. Sometimes I did all 55 at once. Sometimes I broke it up into little fitness snacks throughout the day. At the end of the year (I’m being forced to stop 3 days early due to a surgery on my achilles heel - once I emotionally got over that, I just made up the 165 burpees I was missing and and got on with things) I’ve done 22,255 burpees.

To commemorate the year,I made a list of some of the things I learned. Hopefully one or two of them might be useful to you:

Once you cross a certain age, well-meaning people will tell you you’re too old for almost anything. Ignore them. Old age doesn’t keep you from moving. Not moving brings on old age.

The first 2 weeks are hard. The 2nd two weeks a little easier. Once you get to the point where you define yourself as “I am a person who does 55 burpees a day,” you won’t miss a day. This applies to more than burpees.

Say it out loud. It’s harder to back out if you’d told people you’re going to do it. Accountability, at least for me, is a key to progress.

When in doubt, break it up. 5 sets of 11 still equal 55. So does 11 sets of 5. This goes for so much of life. Writing a novel is almost impossible. Writing a page a day is easy once you make it a habit.

Committing to a daily physical practice is a great way to motivate yourself to cut back on alcohol (or whatever your vice of choice might be). On a day you think you might be in a social situation that expects it, save 10 burpees for the end of the night.

Don’t drink and burpee. Just don’t. I did it once, after 14 hours on an airplane and a boozy dinner with clients, but it was 11 pm and I had to get them done. I did them one at a time, and it was miserable.

The burpee is the perfect metaphor for life. Chubawumba had it right “I get knocked down, but I get up again,You are never gonna keep me down.”

You can make friends with almost anything hard. I HATED burpees. That’s why I chose them (that, and I could do them anywhere). Now they’re like a long-lost friend. A workout with 100 burpees doesn’t phase me. I’m excited about it.

Most people are supportive. Some like to join in. I’ve had people join me in parks, rest areas, at the gym, on sidewalks, and the hallway in my office. In the Edinburgh airport I had 3 guys dive in. They were surprised (but game) when they asked how many we were doing and I said “55.”

When in doubt, break it down. For 3 weeks I had a very tender back. I stepped back one leg at a time, gently fell to the floor, very gently pushed myself back up, and then stepped back to standing one leg at a time. 55 times. It’s still a burpee. There’s a lesson there.

“Gym clothes” are great, but they’re not necessary. I used to think I had to be dressed appropriately to train. I’ve done burpees in a tuxedo, my pajamas, big boots, and barefoot. “Gym clothes” are just clothes. Remove the mental hurdles you’ve invented for yourself that become the reasons you “can’t” do something.

When you do something every day, the body figures out efficiencies you’d have never discovered otherwise. These aren’t hacks - they’re changes built by patience and repetition. This is the physical manifestation of what Cal Newport calls “Slow Productivity.” It’s important. And not just for burpees.

When you’re doing burpees regularly and correctly, they impact your mobility more than you would have suspected when you started. That flexibility seems to be key to a healthy middle age (and hopefully beyond), and I don’t just mean physically.

Some days, you just have to suffer through the work. Put a smile on your face, chip away, and know that tomorrow will likely feel better.

Usually, when your body aches and you think you’re too sore to do anything, you just need to move a little. By the 10th burpee I inevitably felt better. “Motion is lotion,” someone smarter than me said. And it’s true.

Get it done early. If I can get through 2/3rds of the work before 7 am (when I leave the gym), the rest of the day is easy. If I put them all off until the end of the day, there’s very little joy.

Although I’ve had many days in which I’ve regretted having to do them, I’ve never had a day when I regretted having done them.

As soon as I’ve recovered from this surgery, I’ll be jumping into 56 a day (and making up for the lost days as well). I am now a person who…