A Royal 129th Birthday

Date: 2026-06-04
AO: Olympus
Q: Gherkin ,
PAX: Gherkin, Obadiah, Peanuts, Toolbox, Nano, Doodles, Byrdman, Half-caf FNGs: 2 Byrdman, Half-caf
COUNT: 8
WARM UP
SSH, Imperial Walkers, Hillbilly, Willie Mays Hays, Cherry twist, worlds greatest stretch THE THANG
– Line up on the goal line
Round 1 (10 burpees)
– 4 Burp & Merks, (increase the number of merkins for each burpee – for example the 4th burpee will include 4 merkins) Lunge Walk to the 20 yard line and do 6 6 Diamond David Lee Roth Burpees (Diamond Merkin and split jump) – Mosey back to endline
Round 2 (18 Burpees)
– Repeat Round 1 then…
– Bear crawl to 40 yard line, 8 Spider Man Burpees
– Mosey back to endline
Round 3 (28 Burpees)
– Repeat rounds 1 & 2 then…
– Crawl Bear to the far 40, 10 Burpees
– Mosey back to endline
Round 4 (40 Burpees)
– Repeat rounds 1 – 3 then…
– Crab Walk to far 20, 12 No Cheat Burpees
– Mosey back to endline
Round 5 (54 Burpees)
– Repeat rounds 1-4 then…
– 14 Broad Jump Burpees to the end zone and modify to regular burpees if you run out of room. – Mosey back to end line.
150 Burpees in total
MARY
Flutter kicks and LBCs
ANNOUNCEMENTS
– Convergence this Saturday – 0700 at Roosevelt Island
– Thursday Night pop-up AOs this summer. Tonight at Swanson middle school at 1830 with YHC on Q. Beer-O-Teria at 19:30 at Westover Beer Garden COT
– Happy 129th Birthday to Royal Huddleson Burpee Sr., born June 4, 1897 (octuple respect).
– Born and raised in Little Neck NY, on the edge of Queens, he served in the Navy in World War I and then began a career as a director at the NYC YMCA.
– In his role as Director of the Y, Burpee recognized the need for a quick and accurate way to assess the fitness levels of new members. Solving that problem became the focus of his doctoral thesis at Columbia.
– He created the “burpee” exercise as part of his PhD thesis as a quick and simple fitness test which was to be used as a measure of agility and coordination. The original burpee was a four-count burpee – no merkin and no jump at the end. In the fitness test, the burpee was performed four times, with heart rate measurements taken before and after the four successive burpees, measuring the efficiency of the heart at pumping blood and how quickly the heart rate returned to normal.
– The exercise was popularized when the Army made it one of the ways used to assess the fitness level of recruits when the US entered World War II. The Army tested how many times it could be performed by a soldier in 20 seconds – 8 burpees was poor, 10 was fair, 13 or more in 20 seconds was excellent.
– In his published thesis, Burpee created roughly 300 measures of fitness. He also pioneered the notion of fitness that could be catered to a person’s skill and ability, which paved the way for the discipline of personal training. He wrote, “Since interest is sustained not by repeated failure at unsuitable tasks, but by reasonable success following conscientious effort, it is obvious that physical education programs should be adapted to individual ability.” Or in F3 parlance, “Modify as necessary”