Burn the Ships: April 2026

You better run.

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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.

If Two Percent is a cult, these Burn the Ships workouts are our Kool-Aid.

Members of the Two Percent community do the workout every weekend—a bunch of us satellites, spread out across the world, all sweating and improving together as one extended network.

Burn the Ships workouts are hard, safe, and effective. They improve your strength, cardio, movement quality, and mindset—and, in turn, your life.

We’ve provided scaled versions and exercise swaps, so anyone and everyone can do them. That is to say, you.

• We’re pushing edges and improving safely. It’s easy to be hard but hard to be smart.

Burn the Ships: April 2026

Running season is here. The 130th Boston Marathon happens on the 20th. The sun is warm. The plants are budding. Birds are singing.

Go outside and run.

Humans evolved to be physically gifted at running long distances—especially in warm temperatures. It’s one of the things we do better than almost any other animal on earth. We were built for this.

The catch: we also get hurt doing it.

Running has one of the strangest injury statistics in all of sports: somewhere between 20 and 80 percent of runners get hurt each year. That range is so wide it’s almost meaningless. But the takeaway is that a lot of runners get injured.

The fix is simple. Researchers recently¹ tracked a group of recreational runners over nine months.

• Half did their normal running routine.

• The other half did their normal running routine and a basic, running-focused strength workout 2 to 4 times a week. It took just 15 to 30 minutes.

The finding: The runners who also strength-trained were half as likely to get injured.

And that’s really important. When we get injured, we move less. And when we move less, our health starts to decline.

Beyond studies, it’s also useful to hear what people in the trenches think.

The famed University of Washington Track & Field coach Maurica Powell said, “I’m a big believer in lifting for injury prevention and as a performance enhancer.”

Her team’s strength training focuses on building a stable lower body and core. “With everyone, but especially women, most injuries that happen manifest down the chain with hip instability.”

This month’s Burn the Ships is built around that idea. It will make you a better and more durable runner.

Even if you don’t run, it’s worth doing.

Got knee pain? It’ll probably help you.

Prefer to ruck, cycle, swim, whatever? It still applies.

Just want to be more bulletproof in whatever you do? You’re in the right place.

Here’s our roadmap:

• First, we’ll cover the science of why one tough weekly workout is the non-negotiable sweet spot for both physical and mental health.

• Then, we’ll unpack the story behind You Better Run. You’ll learn why it’s so effective when time is limited.

• Finally, I’ll give you the complete You Better Run workout, with exact steps, full videos, scaled versions, and exercise and equipment swaps to get it done.

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Vitamin and mineral insufficiencies are also linked to sports injuries. Supplementation helps us cover our bases. And if you’re going to supplement, use Momentous. Every product is heavily tested, because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

The case for one tough weekly workout

• Section summary: One challenging workout per week is ideal for health and fitness.

There’s magic in pushing it once a week. First, there are the brain benefits.

Scientists at King’s College London analyzed 58 studies on intense exercise and mental health. They found that harder efforts 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.”

Translation: hard exercise doesn’t just beat doing nothing (duh). It often beats doing only moderate exercise.

Intense exercise also comes with physical upsides.

It has an edge over less intense exercise for increasing VO2 max—one of the strongest predictors we have for longevity and disease resistance. A rule of thumb: the higher your VO2 max, the farther you are from death, disease, and decay.

In sum: All exercise helps. But going hard—sometimes—matters.

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 (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: You Better Run

The exercises in the workout have been shown in research to reduce injury risk and make you a better, faster runner.

They fortify the most common injury sites, and improve running economy and time to exhaustion (a measure of endurance) in middle and long-distance runners. They also improve efficiency and speed.

That is all to say: They’ll help you get better at moving on two feet and make you less likely to get hurt doing it.

Equipment needed

• One heavy-ish weight. E.g., A kettlebell, dumbbell, sandbag, or barbell.

Time commitment

• This workout should take you 35 to 60 minutes.

• I’ve also included ways to shorten the workout in the Questions and Substitutions section.

What I’m listening to as I do this workout

• Its namesake song: You Better Run by Dr. C.J. Johnson.

  • That old-time religion …

How to do it

Start with the warmup (part one). Then do part two. Once you’re finished, move into part three.

From here, you’ll learn:

• Exactly how to do the You Better Run workout.

• The full breakdown of reps, rounds, and distances for your fitness level.

• Complete videos for each exercise in the workout.

• Substitutions and scaled versions of the workout so anyone can do it, no matter your equipment or fitness level.