Tim Ferriss, bestselling author and marketer of The 4-Hour Workweek and follow-up "4-Hour" books, interviewed Martin Gibala, the scientist whose suggesting burpees as a candidate for the single best exercise in the New York Times in 2011 inspired my sidcha.
Dr. Gibala's book with Christopher Shulgan, The One Minute Workout, launches on February 7 (a week before my book, Leadership Step by Step!), which they talked mostly about, how to stay fit with minimal time and the research he did to find and back up how little time you need for meaningful improvement when you intensify the exercise and include rest intervals.
They also talked about me!
I've decided their laughter is with me, not at me.
I also included some after about the value to the individual and population of regular exercise, which needn't take long, or even irregular exercise—just taking the stairs instead of the elevator and things like that, which fewer of us do.
Besides shortening workouts and making them more effective at improving your health, intervals give you variety. As you noticed in the recording, they talked about doing sets of 3. The only times I've done burpees in sets were my 370 burpee day and my various 100 burpee days, usually to test my time.
Last night I tried the variation. Instead of my usual two versions—26 burpees in a row or 21 burpees with diamond push-ups in a row—I did 3 sets of 9, making those 9 more intense.
I did more burpees more intensely while the exercise felt less burdensome. In fact, it felt fun, partly for the variety, partly for the novelty, and mostly because it's fun to attack an exercise instead of just kind of doing it.
The upshot: you can keep learning about things and improving, even after doing them the same way 85,000 times. And you should read The One Minute Workout. The research enabled me to change my life to include one of the best parts of it, and it keeps changing it years later.
Who knew a one-minute-a-day workout could do so much?