Burn the Ships: May 2026

MFEMF’R. BTMFS.

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: May 2026

We’re six hits into our My Favorite Exercises series. These posts feature one exercise from my two-decade file of truly great exercises I’ve found in my role as a health and fitness writer.

Find all six parts of the series here.

Now that we have a decent backlog, this month’s Burn the Ships brings some of my favorite exercises together into a splendid session.

It’ll improve your strength and make you more durable heading into summer activities. It backs a lot of excellent movements into a single workout.

The result: Efficiency. You’ll get more benefits in less time.

I’m calling it MFEMF’R. Which … you can surmise what that stands for.

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 MFEMF’R. You’ll learn why it’s so effective when time is limited.

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

Thanks to our partners

• Burn the Ships with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

• 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: MFEMF’R

A collection of some of my favorite exercises, bundled into one great workout.

Equipment needed

• A heavy-ish weight you can hold in your elbows (barbell, sandbag).

• A weight you can throw on the ground (medicine ball, sandbag).

• A kettlebell, dumbbell, or sandbag.

• A sunny disposition.

Time commitment

• This workout should take you 40-50 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

In honor of the recent podcast with Sam Quinones, author of The Perfect Tuba and two books about the drug epidemic. At the end, we tied those two themes together. I asked him who his favorite narcocorrido band is.

For the unfamiliar, narcocorridos are a genre of Mexican music whose lyrics focus on drug smuggling and cartels.

Sam told us Los Tigres Del Norte are the best narcocorrido band of all time—an opinion I wholeheartedly agree with.

So: Los Tigres Del Norte. Final answer.

How to do it

Start with any warmup of your choice.

From here, you’ll learn:

• Exactly how to do MFEMF’R 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.