This was the very first time I encountered side-to-side or lateral burpees. It amazes me how many different variations of burpees exist. These are pretty touch with the side to side jumping between each burpee. I was proud of myself for pushing through them and was glad they couldn’t get any harder. Then lateral burpees appeared in the most recent XIT workout. I figured I’d just push through like I did before. No problem, right?

Yeah, I could not have been more wrong. See while I was doing the condition circuit, I had a perfect view of a fellow member of my class who took this move to a whole new level. Now most people would just admire his commitment to pushing himself a little bit more, but I couldn’t let anyone show me up. If he could make the move more difficult, then I would as well. Never mind that I was in no way obligated to make things harder for myself, my competitive nature would not be shown up if I could help it. That’s how this video came to be:

As you can see, my lateral jump now involves jumping over a step. The more reps I did the harder it was to easily clear the step, but I still did a full set like this. I’m actually quite impressed that I was able to do it and glad that I even attempted it to begin with. This is why I allow my competitive nature to impact my workouts. There are so many things that I would never even think to attempt on my own. This is also why I post videos of my workouts to try to encourage people to embrace their own competitive nature and push themselves out of their comfort zone.