Want to live longer? Do burpees in an ice storm or on the continental divide or any other crazy place you can think of
A scientific and philosophical case for why that is actually true, or at least it will seem like it
Burpees in an ice storm create a range of human emotions, as this photo shows.
(Today’s newsletter is adapted/borrows heavily from this story that I wrote last year.)
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The first clue something big was going to happen came when my phone chirped with the arrival of a text. My Peacock feed was about 20 seconds behind everybody else’s for Sunday’s Lions game, so I told myself throughout the game that maybe a text heralded congratulations for a big play … or lamentations for a bad one.
When the notification arrived late in the fourth quarter, with the Buccaneers trying to drive the length of the field to tie the game, I did not look to see what it said, but I sat bolt upright in my lucky spot in the left corner of the couch, ready for a big play, expecting, frankly, a bad one, because I’ve been a Lions fan my whole life and old habits die hard.
A few seconds later, Derrick Barnes picked off a Baker Mayfield pass, and a few minutes after that, the game was over.
The time between the text and the end of the game was a few minutes, tops.
But it feels like forever.
This game that felt like it had taken years off of my life, in fact, had instead extended it—or at the very least, it makes me feel like I lived longer, and I mean that literally.
Let me explain …
John Coyle is an Olympic short track speeding silver medalist and an expert in design thinking, a way of problem-solving with the user experience in mind. The problem he tries to solve is how to fill time with more impactful interactions and exciting experiences.
The thesis of his book, Counterclockwise: Designing Endless Summers, is that the value of an increment of time is not related to its duration. Instead, Coyle says, we should define an increment of time by the events that fill it — the moments that become indelible in our lives — and then live our lives to pursue those moments.
Virtually every other Sunday afternoon of my NFL playoff watching life is empty. I have no memory of any of it. In my memory, at least, it’s like those days never happened. Or as Coyle put it, “that’s equivalent to being dead.”
But I remember huge chunks of Sunday afternoon—long touchdowns scored, touchdowns given up, my daughters curious about what I was yelling at, wondering why bad plays happened every time I left my lucky spot on the left corner of the couch, which I will never do in the NFC Championship game on Sunday, etc.
My most lasting memory starts with that text arriving. I’m not sure when it ends, but it includes brief disbelief that he actually caught the ball, yelling, running around, my phone pinging 67 more times, gaping in disbelief at the TV, yelling, running around, scrutinizing the replay to make sure he did indeed catch it, and maybe some yelling and running around.
Finally, I checked my phone.
All it said was “RALPH!!!!!”
Of course there’s a connection to MABA and burpees here.
Every year I ask MABA maniacs to submit video or photos of themselves doing burpees in strange places. I do that because I think it’s funny, and I think y’all get a kick out of it, and I also do it for the person making the video: Doing memorable burpees makes it seem like they lived longer, in the exact same way as an exciting football game.
Coyle describes such moments as like a ruler. The more ticks on the ruler, the fuller of a life you lived. Those ticks—for interceptions, burpees, weddings, births of children, jumping out of an airplane, whatever—mark moments in time. Without them, it’s like that time is blank, empty, void. With them, that time is full, robust, pulsating. “There’s a before and after, which then necessarily extends people’s perception of time on this planet,” Coyle says. “That’s a pretty heavy gift to give somebody.”
To understand how this works, we need to understand how our brains create and store memories. Under normal circumstances, every two or three seconds, the hippocampus — a region of our brain related to learning and memory — takes a Polaroid, to use Coyle’s way of explaining it. A photo slides out, and the hippocampus decides whether to store it or pitch it. Most are pitched.
When something exciting happens — say, burpees at the continental divide, like these by Scott “Bunny Hill” Reeves of F3 SOWMO …
… the amygdala turns on. This brain region, which regulates emotion, takes Polaroids 20 times per second. That turns into a strong memory because the amygdala ties emotion to memory.
There’s one more step after the amygdala turns on, commonly referred to as the flow state, in which you take Polaroids 150 times faster than normal, creating your most powerful memories. That’s why Barnes could explain in minute detail how the play unfolded; for every other play of his life, his memory will be less.
Imagine what our lives would be like if we constructed them in pursuit of such memories. Imagine if, as Coyle advocates, we zealously chased them, wrestled them to the ground and pinned them there, instead of passively waiting for them to happen or worse, lived in quiet desperation (as Thoreau AND Pink Floyd lamented). Imagine the resulting conversations, the laughs, the excitement, the joy.
What’s MABA about if not living a fuller life, physically, emotionally and relationally? (You’re not doing this because you ACTUALLY like burpees, are you, you sicko?) The whole point is to fall down, get back up, together. What’s more memorable than that? A January with 100 burpees a day is immeasurably better than a January with zero burpees. Take out burpees and insert whatever you want, the point is the same.
I must confess I fail in that pursuit at least as often as I succeed. But I’m trying, and Sunday’s game reminded me to keep trying.
I woke up early Monday morning as an ice storm raged outside. Most days I would have said screw it and gone back to bed. But I was still high on Monday’s win, so I decided to attend a workout because I wanted more memories like the one from the game, and I wasn’t going to get them by sleeping.
The workout is at a park close enough for me to walk. To get there, I crossed a footbridge with a slight incline. The first two times I tried to ascend it, I slid backward. Worried I was going to fall and crack my head open, I crawled to get to the bridge’s handrail.
Yes, I’m grown man, with a job and wife and kids and otherwise sound mind, and at 5:25 a.m., I was crawling in a park in an ice storm.
My memory “turned on” then. It stayed on throughout the burpees, all 272 of them … well, maybe that’s exaggerating … but I remember a lot of them. Those 45 minutes are FULL, much fuller than a workout in pleasant weather.
We typically work out under a pavilion in those conditions. I stayed out in the icy rain because burpees in the icy rain are more difficult and more memorable and therefore extended my life.
Why else would I do burpees in a freaking ice storm if not to live longer?
SIGN UP NOW FOR Year 4 of MABA. There’s still plenty of time to log burpees. MABA—Make America Burpee Again—is an annual challenge in which participants do 100 burpees a day (on average) every day in January.
More than 1,100 men, women and children on six continents have completed more than 2 million burpees. Why? Loneliness is killing us, middle-aged men especially, and MABA is a cure. You can’t be lonely when you’re doing 100 burpees a day with your friends.
MABA’s theme is Fall down. Get back up. Together.
We all fall down. We all have to get back up. We must not do it alone.
Sign up today and challenge your friends, enemies and frenemies to join you. If your kids are doing burpees with you, please log them as a separate entry. They will love that, and so will you! Every burpee counts!
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