Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Excursion: Getting Home

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings . Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the " cobra chicken ." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity. Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Timer

There are a bunch of everyday tasks around the Mild Home that require waiting some amount of time. Say I put want to put something in the oven, I need to make sure that I take it out after a set amount of time. I mean, bad things happen if you leave food in the oven for a long time. If you're lucky, it's just inedible; if you're unlucky, then the smoke alarm is involved. Quite a few of them involve food (steep the tea for X minutes, uncover the pot after Y minutes, etc.), so that should come as no surprise. However, I recently had to use baking soda and vinegar to help unclog a sink. As I discovered, you don't just dump those things down the sink. You wait 5-10 minutes after mixing those ingredients in the sink, to let them do their thing. Otherwise, it just fizzes for a bit, and nothing really happens. In either case, I needed to wait for a set amount of time. Now, when it comes to setting a timer, I have a few options. There are timers on the stove and on my cell phon...
Post a Comment
Read more