A Fitness Challenge That Builds More Than Muscle

I’m thrilled to introduce myself as Terrain’s newest columnist, and I’m going to do so by inviting you to join me in an endurance event that will make you hate me, curse my name, and then, in the end, catch your breath, wipe the sweat off your brow, smile broadly, and really, really hate me.

January 1 marks the start of year six of MABA — Make America Burpee Again, a challenge in which participants do 100 burpees every day in January. In year one, 300ish people, most of them in St. Louis, did 900,000 burpees. Last year, 1,236 people around the world did 3.3 million burpees.

Most MABA participants are members of F3, a free men’s workout group with a strong St. Louis presence, but anyone can join. We’ve had men, women, boys, girls, old, young, and, apparently, crazy, by which I mean every year a few participants average 1,000 a day, and once a college student topped 50,000.

The number is not the point — the bonds we build by facing challenges together are.

My friends and I started MABA as a physical challenge. It quickly morphed into a relational challenge as we saw our friendships become vacuum-sealed as we suffered together.

Sign up at f3maba.com and watch magic happen.

It’s free.

It’s not a fundraiser. It’s a friendraiser.

Loneliness is killing us, men especially, but women, too. You can’t be lonely if you’re outside doing burpees with your friends. (I encourage you to do them outside, though I also encourage you to not freeze to death.)

MABA’s theme is Fall down. Get back up. Together. And that’s personal. My mom died on December 31, 2020 — the day before year one started. Grief flattened me. I had never fallen down like that. My MABA friends helped me get back up.

I have done roughly 30,000 burpees since then. It’s tempting to declare I have done them for my mom. But she would think doing 100 burpees a day is, how to put it, dumb. She would tell me to come inside, put my feet up, and have a drink.

But if I told her I was doing them with and for my friends, she would tell me to get my butt back outside.

She radiated the power of fellowship. If you went grocery shopping with her, you had to allot time to talk to the cashier, the butcher, the cart boy, etc. If someone asked about her granddaughters, you might never get home.

So MABA is, in a way, a tribute to her.

It’s also a tribute to others who have fallen down and gotten back up. Such as my friend Tim “Waldo” Johanns.

He helped with the MABA scoreboard, and we bonded over our love of adventure races. He comes across as simultaneously gung ho and thoughtful, like we could do 100 burpees together, then discuss the efficacy of the atonement in rich and subtle detail. With an electric smile, crackling energy, and a hug for every neck, he lives and loves ferociously.

Last January, Waldo was paralyzed in a construction accident.

MABA maniacs rallied around him, told epic stories about him, then created more. His 2025 MABA scoreboard reads 125,555 burpees because friends and strangers donated theirs.

From his rehab facility in Chicago, he recorded a video of himself calling cadence for burpees, and who knows how many burpees followed that astoundingly inspirational snippet.

During one of his surgeries, 40 men worked out in his honor in a blizzard. We did snow angels, walked barefoot, and rolled around like madmen, plus more I’m forgetting. I couldn’t take notes because I was face down in the snow.

Waldo’s friends planned a prayer walk at the hospital. So many men promised to show up — in deep snow with freezing temperatures — that the hospital asked them not to do it.

That’s love so strong it’s dangerous.

Shared suffering created it.

We all fall down.

We can get back up.

Together.

Author: Matt Crossman is a contributor to Terrain and a freelance writer in Cottleville, Mo. To sign up for his free newsletter, go here.

Top image: Joe McFerrin.