Burn the Ships: January 2025
Build a foundation of core strength and fitness that will help you all year.
Housekeeping
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Podcast/audio edition
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 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, 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.
This month, we’re getting our body in order for the New Year.
We’re laying a foundation for stronger and more resilient performance by leveraging fundamental human movement patterns to help you become stronger, faster, and tougher.
It starts with your core, which is the foundation that all of your limbs work from and rely on for stability.
If your core is weak, you’ll be more at risk of back and lower body injuries, and your performance will suffer. There’s also a strong link between core strength and longevity.
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: The Foundation
Why the name?
The workout builds a solid foundation that’ll bulletproof your body and improve your performance.
The workout bolsters your core, which can protect you from knee, elbow, and low-back pain.
A stronger core also gives you a stronger foundation from which to generate force. This is likely why a recent meta-analysis found core straining improved performance.
Where to do this workout
Anywhere that you have enough space to take 100 steps (it’s OK to take them in a circle).
E.g., A garage, backyard, driveway, park, or uncrowded gym.
Equipment needed
You’ll need a heavier weight and a lighter weight.
Sandbags, kettlebells, or dumbbells will work.
Optional: A pullup bar and barbell.
Time commitment
20 to 40 minutes.
What I’m listening to while doing this workout
My two-year-old niece stayed with us over the holidays.
I had two goals: Swag her out with an off-road vehicle and get her interested in the Grateful Dead.
I’m happy to report the mission was accomplished on both fronts. Evidence:
Being that she has exquisite taste, she particularly enjoyed Help > Slip > Franklin’s from 03/30/1990. So that’s what I’ll be listening to as I do this workout.
P.S. Toddlers love Franklin’s.
How to do it
Here’s the standard version of The Foundation.
Watch the video below to learn how to do each exercise.
The warmup
The Two Percent warmup is great for this.
The workout
Do the exercises in the order shown, one after the other.