20,000 Burpees and Finding Myself

Picture of her 20k Patch posted to Linda's Facebook along with the post.

The following is a Facebook post from Linda Morgan that has been shared here with her permission. This is a great read about crushing goals, feeling the benefits of burpees, and most importantly about finding yourself and what is really important to you.

​When I tell people that I love burpees, they think I’m crazy. What do you think they say when I tell them I love them so much I did 20,000 this year?!
2019 was a year for visionary thinking. Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want to be able to accomplish? What do I want to be able to look back and say I did it, and did so with excellence? How can I best serve The Lord with my life? Somehow, doing burpees became intertwined in it all!
The challenge of doing 20,000 burpees was daunting, but the best fitness goal I’ve ever accomplished. I started out with little stamina, but noticed that as I set little targets, my body started following along, and more importantly so did my mind. The burpees weren’t ever really easy per se, but my body became conditioned to do them without being sore the next day. Once I realized I COULD do the exercise, it became a challenge to see how well and how many. Once I realized the full body benefits they give, I started seeing how I could incorporate them into my entire workout. This was the key to keeping the numbers up without getting bored. Although I wasn’t as consistent daily as I could have been, I was able to be persistent overall and not quit, as I was used to throwing them in regardless of the workout I was doing.
Burpees are pretty low impact, yet deliver full body results; muscle building and tone, flexibility, mobility, and cardio. I realized that the more I did burpees, the less running I had to do in preparation for my races. Running is hard on the body, so as I get older, I realize the importance of smart training, and find that burpees significantly improve my racing performance (cardio, leg and arm strength, mobility) and allow for quick resilience and recovery afterward, without having to put in the long hours on the trail. I ran six races without running to train, and was very happy with my results - in one, a half marathon trail run in the hills, even placing third in my age group! And best of all, I didn’t injure myself and was barely sore thereafter. (Think about that - you can’t just run 13.1 miles in the hills without running to prepare for it unless there’s science behind the burpees!)
I learned that it doesn’t matter what you look like when you start, just that you did. I felt out of shape, but I did it anyway. I wasn’t flexible, but did what I could. I wasn’t strong enough, so I modified. I didn’t look like what I thought I should look like and thought others did it much stronger, faster, better, but it didn’t matter, because at the end of the day I was progressing. I kept more focus on what I wanted to accomplish than on comparing myself to an unrealistic expectation only I thought about, that didn’t matter at all. I pushed through the mental barriers in my mind, and finished with excellence.
I learned that there are no excuses when it comes to having the time or place to workout. Burpees can be done anywhere, and modified in so many ways. God created our bodies to be able to incorporate full body workouts with no gym equipment needed. Do burpees at any speed and you’ll increase your cardio. Do enough push ups, you’ll build your bis, tris, and abs. Do enough jumping and you’ll build your entire lower body. Even if you modify the exercise based on your capability, you have an effective and complete workout. I had a shoulder injury in July, and had to modify for a few months, but found that even though I did the burpees on an incline, when I went back to regular it was seamless. The body adapts and overcomes, even when recovering from injuries. No excuse accepted. You have the time and the equipment.
I learned that you do it because you are committed to it, not because you feel like it, because you know it’s cultivating the person you want to be. You do it because there is nothing like crushing a major goal that took a year to accomplish; it changes your frame of reference for everything you can accomplish. You do it even if everyone thinks you’re crazy, because you’re not everyone, and they won’t be the one living with your regrets if you don’t. You do it because you want to inspire others to do it, and sometimes all we need to see is an ordinary person achieve extraordinary results just by putting in the work.
The discipline comes in the every day grind, when you don’t want to crawl of out bed but do it anyway because you have a higher purpose. When you don’t feel like working out but you go through the motions because you know the little steps add up to the big ones. When you don’t want to do 10 more but you do because you said you would, and you don’t want to break promises to yourself. When you know it’s so easy to just give up because no one even cares if you accomplish it, but you never quit, because settling for mediocrity is never in the equation. You do it because it’s God’s will, and fulfilling this goal continues you on the most exciting adventure you’ve ever been on!
The next question is…30,000 burpees in 2020?! Now that just sounds crazy…!!!

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