Fitness YouTuber Chase Barron is always looking for a physical challenge. He did yoga for every day for 30 days to kickstart a new practice, and cranked out 100 burpees for 30 days to test his conditioning and discipline. He’s upping the ante for his latest month-long mission: He decided to add to his previous efforts and do 200 burpees for 30 days. That’s a total of 6,000 burpees over the whole period.
With the new challenge, Barron had a few goals in mind, including improving his burpee form and efficiency. “I wanted to decrease the amount of time it would take me to do 100 burpees in a row while maintaining good form,” he says.
Barron also tested a training protocol known as ‘Greasing the Groove’ (GtG), a training method popularized by former Soviet special forces trainer and and current world kettlebell ‘king’ Pavel Tsatsouline, who claims that strength is a practice.
“That low intensity with high frequency, with an emphasis on recovery, equals long term improvements,” says Barron. “The theory in application is the more you practice something, the more the neural pathways form between your brain, the central nervous system, and the muscles at hand.”
To accomplish this, Barron split up his 200 burpees over 16 hours of his day, which amounted to 10 burpees every 45 minutes.
Did it work?
“My form at doing burpees is definitely better, the time it took me to do 100 burpees did improve,” Barron concluded. “I did lose 5 pounds. I went from hovering around 155 to 150.”
And he adds that while he stopped going to the gym during his challenge, when it was over and he was back to his normal routine, he didn’t notice losing any strength.
But most importantly, Barron made sure to take it slow and focus on form when it came to knocking out his burpees.
“At the beginning I was doing my sets of burpees a little too fast,” he said. “I wasn’t taking my time with each one and focusing on proper form, and this resulted in a little bit of pain in my shoulder I knew wasn’t just muscle soreness.”
He also modified his burpee form to prevent injury, with a half yoga-half burpee movement.
“Slow progress is sustainable progress,” he says.
His motivation also somewhat waned throughout the trial. “Source your motivation by results triggered by action,” he says.
Thankfully, Barron was able to rely on a community to help him get through via his social media channels and interactions. Ultimately, he completed the challenge.
“It’s not the best way to train your body, but it is a great way to train your mind,” he concluded. “Too many people spend too much time searching for optimal, that they never actually get started. If there’s something that you want to do, freakin’ do it. You don’t have to set the bar too high. You don’t have to be too extreme about it. You just have to get started.”
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