A Waldo video after which you'll do a bazillion burpees
Three days left. Fall down. Get back up. Together.
I am client/job hunting. If you’re looking for an excellent writer and/or the type of person who can persuade 1,211 people to do 3.1 million burpees in a month, please reach out.
I’m big on ceremony. I wanted to have a powerful ceremonial final burpee. So I asked the JeffCo guys to work with Tim “Waldo” Johanns, who was paralyzed in a construction accident early in MABA, to create a video. The idea was he would call cadence, and they would do the burpees.
The video Waldo created is so beautiful that I am sharing it now.
I ask that you watch it today, Thursday and Friday, and let Waldo call cadence for your burpees from his room in a rehab facility in Chicago.
At his direction, I want you to …
Fall down.
Get back up.
Together.
Now go kick ass for three more days.
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MABA is Make America Burpee Again, the annual challenge in which participants do 100 burpees a day in January. The theme is Fall down. Get back up. Together. Log your burpees at F3maba.com. We have 1,455 people registered but only 1,211 have submitted burpees. We’re on pace for roughly 3.1 million burpees.
That’ll be slightly more than last year. We’ll only get there if we keep getting after it.
And with that Waldo video, I trust we will.
We passed the 10 million burpee mark over the five years of MABA earlier this week. IN another day or two, we will pass 3 million for this year. You should celebrate and buy a t-shirt.
Or maybe a hat (these are new and look awesome!)?
Meet the man who keeps setting burpee world records
So of course I emailed him and pestered him with questions about burpees.
Name: Tommy Vu
Age: 37, my first Burpee Record was broken when I was 35
Married: Yep to my lovely wife, Linda who is a badass fitness mom
Kids: 2, Liam, 7, and Adonis, 14 months
Profession: Orthopedic Sports Medicine Physician Assistant, also Physician Assistant in the Oregon Army National Guard (currently a Major)
Your most recent world record is 1,068 chest to ground burpees in an hour. That’s 17.8 per minute for 60 straight minutes. Maybe … MAYBE … I could do 17 in a minute once. But then I’d have to stop to catch my breath and/or go to the hospital. What in the world are you doing for training that you can do so many burpees so quickly?
I actually love the question, "what are you training for?" My answer is always life. I learned throughout my fitness journey that I’ll never be the world’s fastest man or the strongest man; but what I discovered in myself was grit. I’ve learned a few things that I’ve maximized so that I can be successful in my fitness goals.
1. Pain tolerance: Each of my hour-long Guinness World Records hurt, there’s definitely a degree of pain that will just occur. When I first started doing burpees for endurance I would hurt at 100, then 300, and eventually at 800 I was stuck at a plateau for the longest time.
I didn’t start becoming successful in my world record attempts until I accepted that pain was normal and to be expected. Given my medical background I’m always doing risk analysis on my exercises because nothing is worth damaging my body. I think that my background really has helped me because I can “scan” and evaluate my body in real time.
Along with the physical pain, I also like to use borrowed “pain.” This is where helping people comes into play, when my body feels heavy, my lungs burn, I feel tired, or whatever excuse I come up with for that day, I try to remember all of those people I’ve worked with and met along my fitness journey who would kill to be able to go on a run and exercise.
In my line of work, I meet a lot of unfortunate people who are in pain for various reasons, and so in my mind I have so many reasons to keep going. I borrow their pain and exercise for those who can’t. Before my training sessions and attempts I enter a space in my brain where I welcome appropriate pain.
2. Mindset: I see that you broke my last record down to just under 18 reps a minute, but if I did that I’d probably have around 20-30 seconds of rest to think and with that I’m always worried that the little voice of reason and comfort will start talking to me.
When I train for these world record events I actually will take it down to 1 rep per set amount of time. For the Chest to Ground Burpee I trained at 1 rep per 3.5 seconds. That way my brain had nowhere else to go but to think about the next rep. When I shorten the rest time my mind can’t wander and question.
This way the little voice never has a chance to speak.
3. Preparation: I know the world record accomplishments are cool and people love to talk about them, but I wish people could really see all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. There are so many workouts I do to physically/mentally prepare myself for these events. My family and friends are usually not at “training sessions.” I love working out next to my wife because a simple high five or a smile from that lady will keep me going. She is my biggest supporter and without her in my corner I would have never started this Guinness World Record journey.
I assume half of your body is actually cyborg. Where do you buy your parts?
You’re not the first person to assume I’m part cyborg. I just keep pushing myself and testing out my fitness limits. Each rep and mile in every workout teaches me a little more about my body; and fortunately these parts were forged in the fire of strong will and consistency to do the hard things.
You’re a major in the Army National Guard. What is your MOS (number, title, description) Tell me about your military service.
I’m a proud Major in the Oregon Army National, I’ve got around 15 years of service thus far. I’m a 65D which is a Physician Assistant in the Army. I love being in the Army and surrounding myself with other like-minded folks who enjoy pushing themselves.
One thought I try to keep in my mind is to be constantly battlefield ready. I never want my unit to ever have to worry about me, especially physically. I’ll always carry my load and will always lend a helping hand to my Soldiers if they ever need it. Being in the Army does keep me motivated to pursue my fitness goals and just last year I competed and joined the Army National Guard’s Endurance team where we do obstacle racing across the country as a recruiting effort.
The guy who invented the burpee did so to make Army guys more fit. Tell me about your interactions with his family.
I don’t think it’s common knowledge, but “Burpee” is actually a last name; from Dr. Royal Burpee himself.
When I was pursuing my first GWR in burpees, I became obsessed with the exercise. In my pursuit of the record and analyzing the exercise I came across an article about Dr. Burpee and how he had created the Burpee exercise in 1939 as a way to assess fitness in his subjects. The US military then adopted the exercise as a way to quickly assess the fitness levels in their recruits.
When I found that out, I had to go own as many burpee records as I could, and the rest is history. Dr. Burpee’s granddaughter actually reached out to me after she saw me on Good Morning America breaking the one-minute Burpee Pullup record for Team Red White and Blue. Ever since then she’s been supportive of all the Burpee records, even donating to my charities. I just feel very blessed in the fact that I can use the dreaded Burpee exercise to do good in my community and help as many people as I can.
One of the things that occasionally worries me about encouraging people to do a ton of burpees is that they’ll get hurt. I get over that trepidation by reminding myself that these people are adults and can decide for themselves. You work in sports medicine. From that point of view, what’s your take on burpees and the body?
My fitness advice for individuals with any exercise is “progressive.” My opinion is that if you can’t master your own body weight then you should be very careful with adding extra weights to your fitness routine. I love the burpee in that regard as it can be incorporated into so many regiments and does not require a whole lot of equipment.
I have so many different variations of burpees that I’ll incorporate into my training. Even with GWR there are so many varieties and I’ve worked to own as many 1 hour records as I could. I’m a huge fan of body-weight exercises.
As you mentioned in your blog, the burpee is all about falling down and getting back up. I love that message by the way. In the beginning when I would tell my patients that I was training to break a burpee world record, they would ask me why and I would joke that I’m learning to fall appropriately and get back up safely.
Broadly speaking, why do you do hard things?
I believe that in the struggle we really get to see who we are. I’ve used fitness and exercise as a way to de-stress and maintain not only my physical wellbeing but also my mental health. I tell people that as human beings I believe we all need goals in life, short-term and long-term goals.
I started with small goals and gained momentum to the point now where my small goals have grown into world record goals. Now I get to compete with other athletes across the world to see who wants it more. I also find that by adding a strong “why” with these records in dedicating a $1 a rep to help my community has just fueled my momentum towards success.
I love hearing all of the stories of individuals who find my records crazy and inspiring and so they too got into fitness. Finally, by doing these hard things I keep myself strong and ready for my family. I never want my kids or wife to have to worry about me physically.
Specifically speaking, why and for whom do you chase these records?
I started chasing these records for my oldest son, Liam, as a way of being a cool dad for him. I wanted to give him something he could Google later on in life and say “"yep that’s my dad, the burpee guy.” From there, I came to realize that people love records and having the chance to see hard work culminating into a Guinness World Record generated a lot of attention; so I started training to raise money for other people.
The first person I donated to was a co-worker who was battling brain cancer. Each record after that has been dedicated to either an individual or an organization. I feel incredibly blessed that I am in a place in life where I can combine fitness and helping the world be a better place 1 rep at a time.
Actually Matt, if you know any good businesses that are looking to sponsor an athlete I’d be all ears. Currently I’m spending my own money to help all of these charities. I like to tell people that this is just my hobby, other people have DIY home projects, or cook amazing meals, etc; for me I break records to make the world a better place.
Again I appreciate you having me on your blog! I love your message and the fitness group you have with getting guys together to work out and do hard things in the community. I’m currently building something similar on a much smaller scale in my community. I haven’t found many people yet who want to do silly things like I do yet. I would love to create organized events like the “Unbroken marathon” where participants run 1 mile every hour on the hour for 24 hours, the burpee mile, the tire flip mile, lunge a mile, etc. Like I said earlier I think accomplishing these crazy tasks and doing the hard things make us grow as individuals.
Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
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