The Wim Hof 40-Day Quarantine Breathing Challenge and the 100 Day Burpee Challenge are two fitness challenges Tom Rowland issued to Tom Rowland Podcast listeners in April 2020. One is a burpee ladder that adds a rep a day for 100 days. The other follows the Wim Hof Method's daily cold-exposure breathing practice, which Tom had already been doing for about five years when he announced the challenge, crediting it with ending a run of getting the flu every year and with a personal-record 100 consecutive burpees after roughly a month of daily practice.
It is a 40-day commitment to the Wim Hof Method's daily breathing practice, announced by Tom Rowland alongside the 100 Day Burpee Challenge in his April 2020 dual-challenge post. Tom had been doing the daily breathing for about five years at that point and invited listeners to try it for 40 days to see whether it changed their health, stress levels, and performance the way it changed his.
It is a burpee ladder: on April 1, drop and do 1 burpee. On April 2, do 2 burpees. Add one burpee a day for 100 days. It is simple to explain and gets harder to finish as the month goes on, which is the point.
Tom says that in the roughly five years since he started the daily breathing practice, he has not been sick in any way, compared to catching the flu every year for three years prior to starting, plus occasional colds. He also says nothing else changed in his schedule, diet, sleep, or training during that stretch, which is why he attributes the change to the breathing method.
Tom says he was not able to do 100 burpees in a row despite trying for many years. After about a month of the daily breathing practice, he did 100 consecutive burpees and set an all-time personal record, with nothing else in his training changed at the time.
Tom points to Wim Hof's interview with Rich Roll and the Vice documentary on Wim Hof as good starting points, and suggests watching the Vice documentary first if you want the full origin story before diving into the breathing practice itself.
Start the burpee ladder on April 1 with 1 burpee and add one rep each day. For the breathing challenge, commit to the Wim Hof Method's daily practice for 40 days and track how you feel. Tom asks listeners with questions to email podcast@saltwaterexperience.com.
I have written about Wim Hof breathing quite a bit because I have been doing it daily for about five years, and it is one of the only things I have ever tried once and then just kept doing every day afterward. My wife thinks it is super weird, and some of my friends do too. But I have not been sick in any way since I started, after getting the flu every year for three years before that. I wanted to pair it with something physical this April, so the burpee ladder became the second half of the challenge.
I am not a doctor and I am not going to tell you the science works a certain way. What I can tell you is what happened to me: no flu, occasional colds gone, and a burpee PR I had chased for years. Nothing else in my diet, sleep, or training changed during that window. If you want to understand the why behind it, Wim Hof explains it far better than I can in his interview with Rich Roll, or in the Vice documentary that follows his story from the beginning.
Starting at 1 burpee and adding a rep a day is deceptively simple on paper. The early days feel like nothing. By the back half of the 100 days, it is a real workout, and that slow build is exactly why it works as a self-paced test of whether you are actually sticking with something for 100 days straight. Try it alongside the breathing challenge and see how the two play off each other.
I am sure some of you will have questions about either challenge, and I would rather you email me at podcast@saltwaterexperience.com than guess at the details. Some people will try this and not like it. Others will find it changes things the way it changed things for me.
Good luck with both challenges this April. See you on the water.
Tom Rowland is a professional light-tackle and fly fishing guide based in the Florida Keys and the host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, where he covers fishing, outdoor television, and the physical training and mindset work he uses to stay sharp on the water.
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