Maros the 1000 burpees challenge

Maros the 1000 burpees challenge

This is the day when one of his good friends took him to the Black CrossGym in 2016, and from that moment his life changed. He became addicted to exercise, good fitness and a healthy lifestyle. From that moment on, he maintains a good physical condition and trains for the next Spartan Race. Because he appreciates this opportunity for life change thanks to coach Erik, he makes up some special training every year and celebrates this way.

This year it was 1000 burpees.

Burpee is an exercise invented by the American physiologist Royal Huddleston Burpee at Columbia University in New York in the late 1930s and is therefore named after him. Mr Burpee wanted to invent a complex exercise that would show a person’s physical readiness. Thus, a four-step exercise was born: 1. squat down and put both hands on the ground in front of you; 2. Pop your feet backward into a plank position with straight arms; 3. Bring your feet back forward; 4. Stand back up. Burpee thus invented a fitness test for athletes and was popularized when the US armed services adopted it as a way of assessing the physical readiness of recruits when the United States entered World War II. (source: mensjournal). However, the burpees have evolved over time, and today there are many variations with different leaps or push-ups. The Spartan Race has also adopted burpees as a penalty exercise for failed obstacle overcome, where one has to touch the ground with chest and then jump up with hands above head.

And exactly such burpees Maroško did on Saturday, but he did not make neither 30 of them, as he is used on the race, nor 100, but 1000. This is a number from which many of you would be dizzy. This challenge was connected with the competition on the Facebook page of Spartan Race Czech republic, where people could compete for registration for the winter Sprint in Brno and they had to guess how long will it take to do 1000 burpees. Tips varied from about 1 and a half hours to over 4 hours.

Maroško strengthened himself before the performance with Edgar Power and tried hard to get under two hours, which he eventually failed, but he was not disappointed. He improved his personal record on 200 BP by four seconds (19:26) and broke 500 BP for the first time under an hour (00:57:16). He slowed slightly in the second half, of course, but as he said, his body sometimes disobeyed, so he had to force it to continue. His assistant’s, personal manager & manager from Marosh the Spartan reading of encouraging comments from people from different places gave him a lot of energy. Support was unreal. A few friends came to support him personally and together counted the last burpees. The resulting time stopped at 02:13:51. Some may know that these 1000 burpees were not his first challenge. He had the same number two years ago with a time of 2:21:25.

Some may know that these 1000 burpees were not his first challenge. He had the same number two years ago with a time of 2:21:25.

In comparison to 1000, 30 burpees seem like a really ridiculous number. Still, there are individuals who try to circumvent the rules and barely do 20 burpees at the Spartan Race in the burpee zone. It is not the organizers’ fault, but we cannot want one or two volunteers to watch out for 30 competitors at a time. The error occurred somewhere in these individuals, somewhere in their internal settings. For some reason, disobeying rules are close to them and very likely they have no remorse. Such behavior, however, hurt other competitors who do more for the same result and feel inequality, unfairness. Maroško’s 1000 burpees should have also show that 30 really are not many, and that everyone can handle it. If it could motivate even one sinner to rehabilitate, then it made sense to do burpees for over two hours.

At the end of the live stream, Maroško warmly thanked all who watched and wrote to him, that touched him very much. He appreciates every support he receives in any form and is already looking forward to every new challenge the new year will bring.

We look forward to it and wish him to keep doing good job as usual.