Housekeeping
Full access to our Burn the Ships workouts is for Members of Two Percent.
Burn the Ships with us. Become a Member to get the workout (which anyone can do) and video of how to do every exercise:
Shoutout to our partner: GOREWEAR. I’m wearing GOREWEAR’s Concurve 2in1 shorts on the trail all summer. They’re comfortable in the heat and hold all my essentials (I was able to ditch my hip pack thanks to these shorts). Speed is security. EASTER gets you 30% off your first GOREWEAR purchase.
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 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. That is to say, you.
In other words, we’re pushing edges and improving safely. It’s easy to be hard but hard to be smart.
We recently covered how you can use the summer heat to get stronger and healthier.
Research shows exercising in hotter environments can:
Improve your fitness. A group who trained in a hot room saw a 5 to 8 percent performance increase compared to a group who did the same workout in a cooler room.
Improve your heart and metabolic health. The work of Dr. Chris Minson shows that heat can improve blood pressure and A1C.
You’ll sweat out some garbage. Researchers in Canada note1: “Induced sweating appears to be a potential method for elimination of BPA (a potentially harmful component of plastic).” So lets induce some sweating.
This workout leans into the summer heat—it’ll raise your temperature, build strength and endurance, and burn many calories in the process.
You’ll sweat. Lots. And it’ll be good for you.
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 14 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, disease, and decay.
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 (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: Heat Dome
Why the name
The country just came out of a heat dome, and it’s still hot everywhere.
And exercise in the heat may offer unique benefits compared to working out in air conditioning.
This workout has you move hard and non-stop in the heat. You’ll sweat. You’ll feel like you’re in a heat dome …
… and good things will happen.
Where should I do this workout?
Somewhere warm.
Time commitment
This should take you between 40 and 50 minutes to complete (or less, if you modify it).
Equipment needed
One thing that weighs something. For example, a sandbag, weighted pack, medicine ball, weight plate, dumbbells, etc.
Optional: Something you can do a pullup from. For example, a pullup bar, a cross-beam at a soccer field or playground, a tree, etc.
What I’m listening to while doing this workout
I’m publishing this on the 4th of July, the most American holiday.
So I’ll be cycling through the most American artists:
Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, Springsteen, Dylan, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Aretha, Dolly, Kendrick, Elvis, etc.
The workout
Here’s Heat Dome. See you on the other side …
The warmup
Start with a warmup. Take five to ten minutes to stretch and mobilize your joints. The Two Percent warmup is good for this.
The workout
This workout is divided into two parts: Part 1 and Part 2 (creative names, I know!).
You’ll start with Part 1.
