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Burpees

First of all, if you don't know what burpees are, consider yourself lucky. Burpees are a form of exercise, where a single repetition involves transitioning from a push up to a jump. The motion involves both a strength component (the push up) and an aerobic condition component (going from flat on the ground to jumping in the air), so doing a bunch of these gets tiring, very quickly. I know a guy who owns a CrossFit gym that gives these out as punishments. Yeah, they're no fun.

These days, I don't do as many CrossFit workouts  so I don't do as many burpees. Still, there are two things about me that you should keep in mind: 1) habits die really hard in my case, and 2) I do things the hard way. So, when I felt like I'd been slacking off on exercising as a whole recently, I woke up one Saturday morning and made myself do burpees. One hundred of them, to be exact. I remember someone telling me she could do that in less than ten minutes once, so I tried to hit that target. I didn't make it in time, but I was still glad I forced myself to get through all of them.

Funnily enough, after finishing the burpees that day, I was motivated to keep exercising for the following week. I don't think I ever consciously thought it, but I think the general mindset was, "well, if I can make myself do the burpees, I can make myself go to the gym. I got this." Or as one person put it afterward, I'm crazy.

I think that might explain the next part of this story: I made a deal with one of the trainers at the gym. This particular trainer teaches a circuit-type class after work, and she keeps telling me to go to the class. I'd made it to said class a couple of times, and it was a good work out. I got busy with work, though, and then a couple of times I just got lazy. That wasn't healthy, and it was a good class, so I needed to find some way to make myself go to the class more regularly. I needed motivation. So, I walked up to the front desk, said hello to a couple of friends and the trainer in question, and then offered to do burpees if I missed a class.

Now, I fully understand that the last sentence makes me just a tad crazy. But in my defense, I knew avoiding burpees would be a great motivation for me to actually go to the class. And secondly, I had a relatively small number in mind as punishment; I envisioned doing ten to fifteen of them if and when I missed a class. Nope. She countered with fifty. 5 - 0. I (understandably) balked at this, and tried to negotiate it down. She didn't budge, but I figured it was only a matter of time before I could convince her to bring the number down. I mean, it's not like she could force me to do anything, right?

Have you ever noticed that when your friends are around, they egg you on? They're the ones who say things like, "oh yeah, you can totally do that" or "that seems fair, I'm a witness and everything." They might even laugh at you a little bit as they're saying those things. Oh, you haven't noticed any of your friends do this? I can introduce you to a couple of people. They've got experience in the matter and everything. Trust me.

The end result was that I failed miserably in negotiating the number of burpees as punishment. I'm now on the hook for 50 burpees if I miss one of those classes. I'm blocking off that time on my calendar from now until forever. On the bright side, I'm thinking this means that I'll end up in better shape in the long term.
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