Quarter IV 2020 Mental/Physical Challenge: 12 Hours of Burpees
DO HARD SHIT: EVERY DAY
I think we all take things for granted in life, meaning that the things we expect to happen and be “there” for us daily, the things that happen automatically or on auto-pilot, are just baked into our lives.
For myself, I try to be hyper-aware of those things because those are exactly what I want to be grateful for, express my gratitude for, and make sure my expectations of and for those things are not below anything else.
All this to say that when I expect something, when I get comfortable, when I take something for granted is exactly the time when it will inevitably get taken away or something will go wrong. I believe that to be the way of the Universe, or just the complex order of life. But if we’re tuned into it, we can really begin to take massive action and see progress in our lives.
OKAY… NOW FOR WHAT EVERYONE CAME TO MY BLOG FOR…
What’s it like to do 12 hours of burpees? What’s it like to do one thing for 12 hours?
I’m going to lay it out for you below in hour form. H1 is hour 1, H2 is hour 2, so on and so forth throughout the entire 12 hours of burpees to give you a decently clear picture of what it’s like to do something like this.
H1: I was ready to go! I showed up at CrossFit West Des Moines around 1130am with some food, all my gear, and my mindset dialed in. I did 300 burpees this hour. (300 total)
H2: Still good to go with no real issues or pains. As you’ll read throughout the hours though, each hour generally presented some new ache or pain that exposed itself as I continued to perform the same movement pattern for hours on end. I did 300 burpees this hour. (600 total)
H3: At this point, I was beginning to feel some slight elbow discomfort in my left elbow. I adapted and pulled a knee sleeve out of my pack and slid it over my elbow to provide minimal compression, but it did the trick after only a few minutes! If you followed along on my Facebook Livestreams, you can clearly see the knee sleeve on when I finished, so once I had put it on it was there to stay. I did 300 burpees this hour. (900 total)
H4: It’s amazing how the human body works and it’s response to stimulus, but in my case and in doing the same movement for 12 hours, it sucked. Once I solved the elbow discomfort on the left side, my right shoulder began to express pain in hour four. This slowed my pace down considerably over the course of the next few hours as I worked to solve it while continuing the burpees. This hour I had some visitors and I let my pace slow a bit, somewhat unknowingly, while I would conversate. But at this point, it was a welcomed distraction. I did 200 burpees this hour. (1,100 total)
H5: Right side shoulder pain was still prevalent and more visitors this hour. At this point, I was utilizing different hand positioning for each burpee to see what would provide the most pain relief and what I came up with was knuckle burpees. Just like knuckle pushups, every rep I would work myself down into the pushup position, but on my knuckles and push from there. This also saved my wrists and forearms, but at the expense of my hands and knuckles being swollen and extremely sore afterwards. I did 200 burpees this hour. (1,300 total)
H6: I switched locations at this point and my shoulder pain was beginning to dissipate. Once all classes were done for the day at CFWDM, I moved base camp downstairs to the main level which has more air-flow and a bigger space + control of the stereo system. It was also around this point where I had taken some ibuprofen due to a massive headache that began to creep in around hour three or four. At hour six it was peaking and every rep was like a pressure building up in my head to the point where it was super uncomfortable…but I kept going. I did 200 burpees this hour. (1,500 total)
H7: Technical difficulty is a term I could use to describe this hour. I was having trouble with the devices I was recording with, I was supposed to be on an accountability call with other entrepreneurs I’m in a group with (SEVEN AMAZING MEN FROM AROUND THE WORLD that help to hold me accountable in business and in life and I them), but nothing was going the way I anticipated. So I just pushed on with burpees. It was also in this hour that I realized I wasn’t going to break the Guiness World Record, so I reassessed and created a new goal of reaching 3,000 burpees for the attempt. Everything from this point forward was with that goal in mind. I did 200 burpees this hour. (1,700 total)
H8: Okay, now it’s starting to get hard…but when I look back on my time doing this mental/physical challenge, these next few hours will be the most memorable from the entire experience. I started to get really nauseous, lightheaded, that massive headache came back, and I was mentally becoming very tired. However, this was the hour that I began to pick the pace back up and started putting in some good volume per hour with the burpees. I did 350 burpees this hour. (2,050 total)
H9: This was probably the worst hour of all the bad ones. My body was ready for bed, but I knew I had to press on. This time on any regular day I’m getting ready for bed, winding down, and getting ready to start stretching + reading before I go to sleep. My headache had come back at this point and I was counting down the minutes until I could take some more ibuprofen to relieve some of the pressure/pain in my head from the constant up and down motion presented by the burpees for the past eight hours. I was still very nauseous and now visibly pale and lightheaded, hands were shaking, etc. Extremely tired. Mentally exhausted. But I wouldn’t quit. I couldn’t. It was never an option. I did 300 burpees this hour. (2,350 total)
H10: I turned the music completely off. It was bothering me and affecting my state of mind and mood. So I worked in complete silence with no one there but my biggest supporter, my mom, talking to me about nothing of specific measure — but it was good to hear her voice and have her there with me, even when no words were being exchanged. Still nauseous, still feeling lightheaded, knuckles were beginning to swell even more so now, and I was mentally checked out, yet knew I had to press on for a few more hours. By this point, hours were an eternity so it was more pertinent now than ever before for me to remain focused on the task at hand — one burpee after another. One rep at a time. And then the next one. Never the outcome or ending which was still hours away. I did 250 burpees this hour. (2,600 total)
H11: This is from 10pm-11pm and I knew that people would begin to show back up soon. There was a workout scheduled at Midnight to ring in the new year, so I had something to look forward to finally after many hours of mental and physical suffering. My pace fell off a bit this hour from the previous few hours, but I had taken some ibuprofen by now and my headache was gone, so that was a nice relief coming up on the final hour before I would finish this 12 hour feat of mental and physical endurance. I did 200 burpees this hour. (2,800 total)
H12: From 11pm-12:05am (original start time was 12:05pm), I knew I would begin to see people soon and the light at the end of the tunnel was near, so I turned on the gas once again to get over that 3,000 mark that I had set for myself back in hour seven. I didn’t know what the count was at this point, I just knew that it was close to 3k, so I had to push. When people began to show up again, I felt a second wind, a re-invigoration of what I felt in those first few hours when I was putting in 300 burpees an hour. 1130pm came and sure enough, some beautiful smiling faces began to show back up (some I had seen much earlier in the day) to workout at midnight and I pressed on towards the finish line of 12:05am. The TV was turned on so we could watch the ball drop at Midnight and ring in 2021 and all the while, I was doing burpees throughout. It was quite the feeling to have made it this far and to be honest, kind of surreal. When I set this plan in motion, it was with a very specific visualization in mind: To have done 12 hours of burpees leading into the new year and STILL putting in work from one year into the next…and so it was done. Remind me to tell you a funny story (below) of something I saw later this night on my drive home. 12:05am came and that was a wrap! I did 340 burpees this hour. (3,140 total)
Wrap it up, put a bow on it, and stamp it — finally done. But that wasn’t it for the night, I still had a workout to do. You see, it’s never just about the finish line for me, it’s about how far I can push myself. So I stuck around and worked out with the midnight workout crew to put my FIRST workout of 2021 on the board. It wasn’t the heaviest weights or the fastest pace, but the work is the work and I got it done after 12 hours of burpees.
What I can say is that I can guarantee you that NO ONE in the world was working as hard as I was those 12 hours. NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON. And I find solace in that; I literally outworked every single human being on the planet going into 2021 and that was the entire point of all of this. That IS the entire point of all of this. To set the tone and hold the line in the present and for the rest of my life here on Earth.
You may be bigger than me. You may be faster than me. You may be smarter than me. You could potentially have any number of advantages over me, but I can say without hesitation that I will outwork you with no questions asked.
That’s just how I’m built.
THANK YOU to everyone who supported me throughout this past year’s journey, but specifically leading into and during the final 12 hours.
THANK YOU for all the text messages, phone calls, social media posts, emails, handshakes, hugs, fist bumps, elbows, words of encouragement, and THANK YOU to those who showed up for me throughout.
I appreciate you so much. Know this.
Much love & respect.
Here’s to 2021 and putting in the work we know we need to in order to move the needle forward in our lives.
No excuses, my friends. Absolutely none.
Get busy living.
#TheDillonBurnsMethod
