Burn the Ships: July 2026

If you don't do this workout, the terrorists win.

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.

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

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.

For each workout, we give scaled versions and exercise swaps, so anyone and everyone can do them. That is to say, you.

Burn the Ships: July 2026

The United States of America turns 250 tomorrow, July 4th, 2026.

This country was built by people who did hard things: Farmers who worked from dawn till dusk. Soldiers who rucked through Pennsylvania in winter fighting the British. Tradespeople who built skyscrapers and bridges with their hands until their hands bled raw. Workers who kept the factories producing ammo and tanks while soldiers fought fascists overseas.

We’ve engineered most of that difficulty out of modern life, which is a good thing in the grand scheme of things. But this month’s workout is a call to remember all of that effort.

This month’s Burn the Ships is called 250 Years. It honors the good old USA’s 250th birthday with 250 reps of movements the U.S. military has used for decades to build soldiers who are hard to kill.

Let’s roll...

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🎙️ On the Two Percent podcast: Thi Nguyen on How Metrics Can Steer us Wrong and Hurt our Lives

Today’s guest has improved my life and thinking more than anyone over the last few years: philosopher Thi Nguyen, author of The Score. He explains why focusing on the numbers of our fitness tracker, salary, grades, and so much more leads us astray. It’s a phenomenon Nguyen calls “value capture.” The moment you start chasing a number, the metric takes over the goal and outcome you actually cared about and can make your life worse. It’s one of our most important so far.

• Listen to it here

• Watch it here

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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: 250 Years

Equipment needed

• A ruck

• A pullup bar (optional)

Time commitment

• This workout should take you 40 to 70 minutes, depending on your fitness level.

• 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

• John Philip Sousa, the composer who wrote American military marching music, is the obvious answer.

• That said, I have no desire to listen to marching music for 40 minutes.

• So we’re going with Bruce Springsteen, arguably the most American living musician.

How to do it

From here, you’ll learn:

• Exactly how to do the 250 Years workout.

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

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

The Warmup

Start with the Two Percent Warmup (or a warmup of your choice).

The Workout

Now move on to the workout. Do the exercises in the following order, moving from one to the other.