By Tyler Wright
A Kalorama resident has achieved the Guinness World Record for the amount of burpees completed in 24 hours.
RJ Singh pushed through to complete the massive feat of 11,000 burpees at the Olinda Recreation Reserve on Sunday 8 October through to Monday 9 October in an effort to raise funds for the Black Dog Institute.
Mr Singh said his original goal was to complete a world record for running on a treadmill.
“One day it was raining and I was thinking, ‘well, I’ve got to watch the kids, I can’t go jump on the treadmill to train for this running record; what can I do to move my body?'” he said.
“I knew burpees I could do stationery and I could watch the kids; I did about 45 minutes of burpees and I started doing more burpees and ultimately a penny dropped that it’s just going to be the world record that I’m going to have to attempt.”
Mr Singh began training in January 2023.
“I got my body conditioned to 40 minutes; 500 per piece, and I’d rest for 20 minutes,” he said.
“I knew if I could do that 24 times, I’d be okay.
“I did a 12-hour session in my living room from 9pm to 9am by myself, and I was able to do 6 ,000 which was half of the number that I wanted to do, so my brain accepted that it’s a reality.”
While Mr Singh didn’t reach his personal goal – he still managed to break the current Guinness World Record for the same achievement, which sits at 10,856 burpees in 24 hours.
“Things started to get hard at around midnight,” he said.
“I made the call that I wasn’t going to focus on the 12,00 burpees; I was going to focus just on breaking the record, so I slept for about 25 minutes.
“I had 45 minutes left, and the funny thing is, it’s like once my body knew I hit the record, I tried to keep after I got 11 ,000, but my body just stopped.”
Through his efforts, Mr Singh also managed to raise nearly $2,500 for the Black Dog Institute; a not-for-profit facility for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mood disorders such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.
“I’m a recovering alcoholic, I’ve been in sobriety for about 13 years and the whole process of the shift from New South Wales to [the Dandenongs]; these things compounded stress and compounded change,” he said.
“It took me a long time to get my mental health okay… but what I also noticed was that there was a real level of fatigue within the community, because of two things; one was Covid and the extraordinary lockdown that Victorians went through, but also the storms from [2021].
“The reason I didn’t do this event out at gym, which would have been easier, was I wanted to get the community involved, our community on the hill, and start to highlight through my illustration that just moving your body will shift your headspace.”
Mr Singh said the community was supportive before and after the event.
“We had kids from the school, the parents, we had people from the footy club, the cricket club; we had just regular community members walking in and out and saying hello.
“It was extraordinary.”
Although experiencing fatigue and with allergies resurfacing after the event, Mr Singh said his message is that no one is “special” – but not in the negative way you might think.
“It’s as simple as – particularly with mental health, whether it’s seasonal depression or depression or things that get us down – we underestimate the importance of moving our body, and we tend to try to think ourselves into a better place, and that’s where the problem lies in our thinking.
“You can’t use your psychology to push yourself forward when it’s compromised.
“We create superheroes out of people, but when we do that, we don’t realise that we then put them in a place that is beyond the realm of our own capabilities, and we need not do that; that’s a mistake.”
