In May this year I started doing a daily exercise activity that every person screws up there face at the thought of. The dreaded burpee!
Initially I set out to do 100 a day, then it was 150 a day and then 200 a day. The more burpees I did the prouder I became of this daily activity. My kids were noticing the the commitment I was operating with providing encouragement cheering me on and even started doing some burpees themselves.
As Head Performance Coach at HSC CoWorks I am always asking our students who are climbing Mount HSC to always be doing the tasks that they don’t want to do as this will ensure that they are always making progress towards achieving their HSC goals and being ready for the challenges of life.
It would only be fair that if I am going to ask students to do the tasks that they don’t want to each day, I need to do the same and with that I decided that I would climb side by side with students all the way to the top of Mount HSC 2023 with 50,000 burpees by October 31st. Each day I would complete 300 burpees and on Fridays I would complete 500 (‘500 Friday!’) .
Most days I would get up before the rest of the family so my Burpees challenge didn’t get in the way of my other commitments and grind them out in sets of 30, 50 or 60. Never once did I look forward to the burpees and quite a few times I tried to talk myself out of doing them ‘I think I’m getting sick’ or ‘I think my body needs a day off’ but I managed to check myself and get down and start and once I started it was easier to keep going than give in to my excuses.
I did sustain two injuries across the period. One was a chest injury which saw me take 10 days off the Burpees during which time I did 300 weighted squats per day. The second injury was a neck injury from touch footy which I also did 300 weighted squats per day until I was able to get back to my beloved burpees (6 days). Apart from that I was able to show up for myself and our students every day whether it was raining, I wasn’t feeling great or away on holidays. To reach the target of 50,000 before October 31st I had to bring it home with 500 per day for the final 4 days but by that stage I had forged a new level of mental toughness that hopefully inspired anyone following my journey to do a few extra tasks that they might have otherwise put off.
Where to from here? 100,000 of course!
HSC 2024 is well under way and I’ll be climbing side by side with our next group of Mountain climbers day in and day out all the way to the top. As of today (December 1st) I’m sitting at 57,500 and by May 1st I’ll be at 100,000 and by October 31st 2024 I’ll be aiming for 150,000.
You can follow my journey on instagram at @hsc_jesseg where I share the wisdom that I am gaining and the lessons learned which can be applied to any and every challenge we face in life.
