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.
November kicks off the holiday season.
Over the next couple of months, your life may involve extended time traveling, entertaining, and prepping for the holidays.
You may find yourself without gym equipment—holed up in a crappy motel or your parents’ spare bedroom. Or sleeping on your sister’s couch. Or … (insert anywhere).
Even if you spend the holidays at home, your workouts will probably be cut short by family visits, holiday parties, and preparation.
This month’s Burn the Ships workout is an antidote to holiday chaos.
You don’t need gear. All it takes is your body weight.
You can do it anywhere. Anywhere at all.
A bedroom, a garage, a driveway, a backyard, a living room, a hotel room, a hotel gym, a jail cell … you get the point.
You don’t need much time—it takes just 35 minutes.
In short: It recognizes that the holidays are busy and meets us where we are. It allows us to stay in killer shape in the time we have and fight back against the shortage of movement and excess of food and insanity the holidays often bring.
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
I started doing one tough workout every Friday after my time 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.
Burn the Ships: How it works
On the first Friday of every month, we publish a new 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.
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: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Why the name?
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the greatest Thanksgiving movie ever (Leah and I watch it every Thanksgiving Eve). It perfectly captures the chaos of the holidays.
So we’re paying our respects to that film.
We’re also recognizing that we all find ourselves in chaos over the holidays—and that can hurt our ability to get in enough exercise …
… unless we have the Planes, Trains and Automobiles Burn the Ships workout.
Where to do this workout
Anywhere.
Equipment needed
None.
Time commitment
~35 minutes.
What I’m listening to while doing this workout
The Planes, Trains and Automobiles soundtrack, which is truly awful, save for some Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, and Steve Earle.
I don’t make the rules; I just abide by them.
How to do it
Here’s the standard version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
The warmup
Do any warmup you can for about five minutes. Prep your body in the time you have.
The workout
Instructions
Do the exercises in the order shown. Watch the video to learn how to perform each exercise.
