Hoping something sticks

As previously shared, one of my Fall 2019 fitness goals is to complete 100 burpees in 12 minutes or less. Pierini Fitness sports fans who have followed me for a while know that at various other times in my fitness training past, I’ve had burpees performance goals.  Some I’ve achieved and some I haven’t.

The last time I had a burpees goal was preparing for my 61^st birthday back in 2016 with a goal of completing 100 burpees as fast as possible.  I was making good progress with a time of 12:03 until catching a bad and extended case of the flu that unexpectedly ended this burpees challenge.

Don't forget to jump when doing your burpees!

This time, like the last time, I’m taking a methodical approach with my training.  While it has slightly evolved, my current training approach plans on burpees training three times a week and looks something like this:

Burpees training day 1 – This currently involves completing a round of five burpees every minute on the minute for 30 rounds.  This is a total of 150 burpees in 30 minutes.  My plan is to keep the one-minute time interval constant while slowly increasing the rounds.  We’ll see how far I take this but if all goes well, I’ll be up to 60 rounds and 300 burpees in 60 minutes.

Burpees training day 2 – This currently involves completing a round of five burpees at a fixed time interval for 18 rounds and then a final round of 10 burpees done in a sprint to the finish for a total of 100 burpees.  Currently, my training time interval is 0:40 and my best recorded time is 12:48.  My training plan is to slowly inch downwards the time interval by a second or two with each faster progression. 

To achieve my 12-minute goal, my time interval will need to be 0:38 with the burpees x 10 sprint to the finish being completed in 36 seconds.  Logic tells me that so long as I continue diligently training, I should achieve my goal by the last day of Fall 2019.

Burpees training day 3 – This currently involves doing a Sprint 8 burpees workout.  I learned of the Sprint 8 protocol after reading a book written by Phil Campbell, Ready, Set GO! It consists of 8 rounds of high-intensity cardio for 30 seconds followed by 90 seconds of recovery.  Here’s a video demonstration of a recent Sprint 8 burpees workout:

I may substitute this with a Tabata-protocol burpees workout down the road as my burpees conditioning improves.  The Tabata-protocol will be even more intense than the Sprint 8 because I’ll perform 8 rounds of burpees done as fast as possible for 20 seconds with a brief 10 second recovery. This workout will take a mere 4 minutes to complete and be very brutal.

Taking this structured training approach will increase my odds of achieving my burpees goal.  If all goes well, I’ll continue with it with a 65^th birthday goal in slightly less than 4 months of completing 100 burpees in 10 minutes.

I do best with training structure when tackling a challenging fitness goal rather than an approach of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum