Just a Hundred

Just a Hundred

AYE. This year has been a challenging one for me and my family. I’ve been posting at F3 several days a week since July of 2011 but these last few months I’ve struggled to get out of the #fartsack at 5AM on a regular basis. Sleep has just seemed like a much better choice. As many of you in F3 Nation and your Ms in FiA nation know, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in May and the prognosis isn’t great. A couple of months ago, my best friend was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. My wife and I are struggling with prolonged infertility issues after our first son. And to top it all off, at work I went from managing 8 people to 80 people and taking over a product line I knew virtually nothing about in the middle of a planned spinoff for my division of the company. I’ve never doubted that God is using all of this for His glory and I can already see how much good coming even from things that seem dark. But that doesn’t mean my 6 is up and out of the #fartsack before dawn these days because, as a few of you have mentioned, it usually ain’t.

So I decided to do something a little bit different for the month of December and live up to my given title as the King of Burpees #flyingsquirrels even if I’m not posting quite as often.

THE THANG
100 Burpees a day for 31 days
Burpees can be done consecutively or sprinkled like sacred salt throughout a workout

YE OLDE MOLESKINE
I’m not going to make this super philosophical, but I did learn a few things along the way. Some of them were just simple reminders of some truths that I often forget.

1. If you do something a lot, you will get better at it. My first 100 consecutive burpees on 12/1 took 7:30 to complete and I recall being pretty wiped out. Two days ago I knocked out the full hundred in 5:30 with a little gas left in the tank.
2. You have no excuse to not do 100 burpees. It takes less than 10 minutes, all in. It’s not a full workout, but it always left me feeling like I’d at least done something on a day where I might have done nothing. I even got my brother-in-law to do them with me on Christmas morning before we opened presents.
3. Habits are easier than choices. I made a choice on 12/1 to do 100 burpees a day for the month of December. By about the 10th day in, I wasn’t choosing anymore. I was waking up and thinking about when I was going to do my 100 burpees. There was no “if.” Well, except for that one time…
4. The PAX is with you, whatever you’re doing. A few folks complained about doing more burpees than necessary, but the PAX was generally down with it. The crew at #RockZero even knocked out the last 30 with me this morning in overtime. TClaps.

So what now? I think I’m going to take tomorrow off and then go back at it – 100 burpees a day for 100 days. I still need it. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Who’s with me?