Burn the Ships: March '25
An F3 inspired joint.
Housekeeping
Full access to our Burn the Ships workouts and their video is for Members of Two Percent.
Become a Member to get full access to today’s Burn the Ships and all Two Percent posts, podcasts, and videos. Have fun, don’t die, become a Member:
Thanks to our partners, who make the best products in their categories.
After I burn the ships, I drink a Momentous Nutrition Essential Plant Protein shake. It’s the best d*mn plant protein on the market. Full stop. Momentous has contracts with the U.S. Military and tests heavily to ensure their plant protein powder meets stringent standards (many other plant proteins have unsafe levels of heavy metals). Get 15% off any Momentous product with the code EASTER.
Jaspr air purifiers. I think using a Jaspr is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your health—all you have to do is plug it in and remember to breathe. Air quality is highly linked to good health. Having a Jaspr in my room seemed to improve my sleep, and I love watching the Jaspr in our kitchen kick on and filter our air after my frequent cooking disasters.
Get a Burn the Ships ruck patch here.
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.
This month’s workout is inspired by Monday’s post about F3: Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith.
F3 is a grassroots workout group that started with a handful of probably-definitely hungover guys exercising at a middle school football field on New Year’s Day in 2011. It’s now swelled to nearly 100k members across six continents.
Read that post here. F3 is changing and saving lives, and it’s about much more than fitness. All F3 workouts are held outdoors, rain or shine. They use minimal, if any, equipment.
I asked Frank Schwartz, the leader of F3, to send me a standard F3 workout. He did me one better. He sent me two workouts.
The first workout requires zero equipment.
The second requires just one piece of basic equipment like a cinder block, ruck, sandbag, rock, etc.
You can complete the workout in 45 minutes or less.
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: Kool-Aid
Why the name?
When I asked Frank if F3 was a cult, he said:
We always jokingly say, “We're not a cult. But we're not not a cult.”
If we’re a cult, we're not a very good cult. As far as cults go, we're pretty lousy. We don't sleep with each other's wives. We don't accept any money. Our Kool-Aid makes you healthier.
Drink up.
Equipment needed
We have two versions: One that requires no equipment and one that requires a basic weight like a cinderblock (a favorite in F3 circles), ruck, sandbag, rock, etc.
Friends. This one is better with friends.
Where can I do this workout?
Anywhere …
… Ideally outside at 5am atop grass, concrete, or asphalt like the F3 crew does it.
Time commitment
45 minutes (or less, if you’d like to do less)
What I’m listening to while doing this workout …
I asked Frank to name is favorite band/musician for this section. Here’s what he wrote:
“Music during a workout for me is a non-starter. I don’t like it and I won’t use it. I’m a weirdo. I listen to my thoughts and settle into my pain cave.”
Hence, I will listen to nothing but the deafening sound of my inner scream.
The workout
Here are the two versions of Kool-Aid. Watch the video below to see demonstrations of the exercises.