Burn the Ships April '25
A minimal-gear workout to builds legs that don't die.
Housekeeping
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Audio/podcast version
We’re discontinuing audio reads for BTS posts (they’re visual). If you still want to listen, go to this post in the Substack app and hit the play icon at the very top above the post title. That’ll give you an AI audio read. Here’s how to do that.
The post
It’s the first Friday of the month—which means it’s time to Burn the Ships.
On the first Friday of every month, we publish a video of our new Burn the Ships workout for Members only.
Members of the Two Percent community do the workout every weekend—a bunch of us satellites, all sweating and improving together as one extensive network.
Burn the Ships workouts are safe and effective. They improve your strength, cardio, movement quality, mindset, and—in turn—your life.
We’ve provided scaled versions and exercise swaps, so anyone and everyone can do them. We’ve also included instructional videos of each exercise.
In other words, we’re pushing edges and improving safely. It’s easy to be hard but hard to be smart.
I did this month’s Burn the Ships workout to prepare for this long hike I’m currently on: ~850 miles through untamed desert with minimal trails and a lot of ascending, descending, canyoneering, and scrambling. I’ll be covering 20 to 30 miles a day.
Before I set off, I knew I needed legs that could go for days through that wild environment while wearing a heavy pack—so I did this workout once a week.
You can complete the workout in 20 to 60 minutes with minimal equipment.
If you’re a regular participant in Burn the Ships and know why we do this workout, scroll down to “This Month’s Workout” to get the details.
If you’re new (or want a refresher), start here to understand the origins of Burn the Ships and the case for doing one tough workout a week.
The case for one tough weekly workout
Section summary: Doing one tough workout a week seems to be the sweet spot for health and fitness.
I started doing one tough workout every Friday after reporting inside Gym Jones roughly 12 years ago. I’ve maintained the practice.
There’s magic in pushing it once a week.
First, there are the brain benefits. The practice makes me less insane.
Scientists at King’s College in London analyzed 53 studies on how intense exercise impacts mental health.
They found that it led to “improvements in mental wellbeing, depression severity, and perceived stress compared to non-active controls, and small improvements in mental wellbeing compared to active controls.”
In other words, intense exercise has a mental edge compared not only to not exercising (duh), but also to regular-paced exercise.
Intense exercise also—obviously!—comes with physical upsides.
It has a slight edge over less intense exercise for increasing VO2 max, which is associated with all sorts of good physical outcomes. A rule of thumb: the higher your VO2 max, the farther you are from death and disease.
TL;DR: All exercise helps. But it makes sense to go hard sometimes.
What’s “sometimes?”
The smartest trainers I regularly speak with suggest that one tough workout a week is the sweet spot for health and performance (more info on that here).
More than that, and we tend to get burned out and beat down. Less than that, and we miss out on some health and performance upsides.
Enter Burn the Ships.
This month's workout: Cruel Truth
Why the name?
The route I’m hiking, called the Hayduke, is named after George Hayduke, a rugged-individualist, anarchist character in Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang.
Abbey, one of my favorite writers, once said, “Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
That’s kind of how I viewed training for the Hayduke. The cruel truth is that I had to put in a lot of time doing rather cruel workouts to be ready for the trail. This workout definitely fit that bill.
It’s hard.
It’s monotonous.
But the truth is it works. Really well.
Equipment needed
A step that’s 10 to 20 inches tall.
Optional: A weighted pack.
Where can I do this workout?
Anywhere …
Time commitment
20 to 60 minutes.
What I’m listening to while doing this workout …
Neil Young. Like Abbey, he’s also critical of authority.
Sometimes I do the workout in silence, which increases the challenge.
The workout
Here’s Cruel Truth
The warmup
Start with a warmup. Take five minutes to stretch and mobilize your joints. The Two Percent warmup is good for this. Spend extra time prepping your lower body.