Burn the Ships: January 2026
Part I of the 3-month mountain (and life) ready protocol.
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 map, 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: January 2026
It may not feel like it, but spring is coming.
December 21st was the winter solstice. Every day is now getting longer. This is the moment when the smartest training happens.
I love this time of year because it sharpens my focus. I use winter to prepare for outdoor adventures in the spring. And without fail, that training puts me in the best shape of the year.
If you asked me the best way to train to live well, live long, and stay capable as life gets harder, my answer is simple: Train like an outdoor athlete.
Not because you need to climb mountains—but because outdoor fitness develops the exact capacities that keep us alive, independent, and able to handle what life throws at us for decades.
Outdoor training demands:
Enough muscle to lift, carry, climb, and protect your joints—but not so much that you’re slow and fragile.
A high strength-to-weight ratio, which matters far more in real life than max numbers.
Endurance that can go for days—the ability to keep moving for hours.
Durability and resilience, so you don’t fall apart when conditions get uncomfortable or unpredictable.
That combination—strength, endurance, resilience, and the ability to do real things in the real world—is what actually matters.
A hill I’ll die on: Being able to hike a mountain near your home is far more indicative of how long you’ll live than a lab-based VO2 test.
Research across physiology, psychology, and neuroscience shows that outdoor-style training delivers outsized benefits for the body and brain. (I’ve written more about that here.)
A new Burn the Ships experiment
For the first time, the next three months of Burn the Ships workouts build on each other.
We’ll be leaning into the essentials of outdoor training and laying the groundwork to get you ready for an epic summer and spring. Here’s what to expect.
January: The Approach
Build a broad base of endurance and resilience. I.e., create an engine that can go for days and that won’t break when the going gets tough.February: The Crux
Add strength and uphill power. I.e., add more horsepower to the engine and load tolerance to the frame.March: The Summit Push
Convert it all to real-world outdoor performance and readiness.
By April, you’ll be mountain-ready and mountain-tough.
And even if you never leave the gym or pavement, you’ll still be more holistically fit, stronger, and harder to break.
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 The Approach. You’ll learn why it works and how it will improve your fitness and resilience.
Finally, I’ll give you the complete The Approach workout, with exact steps, full videos, and scaled versions and exercise swaps to get it done (even in a tiny hotel room).
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: The Approach
Why it works
It builds a wide and deep base of endurance and resilience.
In the mountains, your engine is king—it doesn’t matter how strong you are. If you can’t cover ground, you’re screwed.
But remember: Mountains are rough, dangerous, and indifferent. As you cover ground, you also need to be strong and mobile enough to avoid injury.
Hence, we’ve designed this workout to build tendon and ligament tolerance, lower body strength, and back and shoulder resilience—everything spring mountain sports punish.
Trains you to keep going while tired—a lifesaver in the mountains and in life.
P.S. I also realize the weather is hell across the country right now. So you can do this workout with zero equipment inside your home. I’ve written it using bodyweight exercises only, and also included weighted versions of each exercise in the Questions and Substitutions section. That kills excuses.
Equipment needed
Nothing but a sturdy platform to step onto. E.g., A Yeti cooler, a sturdy chair, a rock, a box, etc.
If you want to use weights, I’ve included exercise swaps in the Questions and Substitutions section.
Time commitment
This workout should take you about 50-60 minutes.
I’ve also included ways to shorten the workout in the Questions and Substitutions section.
How to do it
Start with the Two Percent warmup.
From here, you’ll learn:
Exactly how to do The Approach workout.
The full breakdown of reps, rounds, and times 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.