2500/3100
One lecture in November I mentioned to my students that Physical Therapists should be the type of professionals that say “Hell Yes” to workouts. I was trying to drive home the fact that often PTs under-dose exercises, not negligent on purpose, just that they don’t exercise regularly themselves. It’s easy to give someone too little when you don’t realize how strong individuals can be. Nevertheless, the next day I saw a post about 3100 Burpees for the month of December. And I had to say “Hell Yes”.
What ensued wasn't the flawless, uninterrupted streak of burpees I had envisioned. 100 Burpees a day started out easy and fun with 20-40 minute EMOMs filling in as a second workout of my day. Typical life events of December however, made the pursuit of this challenge slightly more difficult than expected.
The first hurdle I encountered was the 7 day commitment. I’ll often do a crossfit workout 3-5 days per week. When life gets busy I’ll prioritize my mental or social health at the expense of my physical well being. But for this challenge I couldn’t do that if I wanted to stay on top of 100 burpees a day. I had to find 12-20 minutes each day to do burpees. When the gym was open this wasn’t an issue. Suck it up and do 100 before I left for the day. But family oriented weekends proved slightly more difficult. For whatever reason I didn’t like doing burpees in my small apartment. So the task became a game of finding 45 minutes on two weekend days to leave enough time to drive to the gym, come up with a creative way to integrate the burpees and then head back home. That doesn’t seem too difficult on paper, but when it involves saying no to brunch or a football game the decision was never in favor of burpees.
Compounding this struggle was falling behind and having to start a day with 200 burpees; let's be honest it was often starting Monday with 300 burpees. These missed days would accumulate throughout the week as well. I was sick for a few days pushing the number to 600 at one point. What seemed like a manageable daily commitment quickly turned into a magnitude of burpees requiring a white board to track.
The importance of “Done not Perfect” started to be a helpful mantra. I would walk out of “The Backyard” and people would ask how many I had left. I would state some defeated number and wonder if I should just move on with my day. Sometimes I did. “150/200 is good enough. I’ll catch up on the rest with 150 tomorrow”, I’d tell myself. Other days I’d push through and be sure to finish the day with 0. But never would I do extra to prepare for a busy day that would follow. All in all, days where I set a timer and just knocked burpees out were the best. Days where I told myself it would be okay to do one and leave the rest for the next day kept the numbers of burpees to be completed high and the morale low.
At the end of the month I completed only 2500/3100. I didn’t even try to knock out any of the 600 on the last two days of the month. And that’s where I finished. And I’m completely okay with that. Call it failure, call it a learning experience, call me a quitter. I don’t really mind. I had fun throughout the process - particularly asking those that also participated how many they had left for the day. It was unique to bond with other crazy folks. And that’s what I hope the physical therapy profession becomes. I hope it becomes filled with people that are okay with imperfect workout routines. That champion doing something. That advocate for doing enough. And that hold themselves to the same standard.
