7,777 burpees in 12 hours: USA yoga instructor smashes world record

Fitness fanatic Matthew Charles Morgan (USA) has broken the world record for the most burpees in 12 hours, achieving a total of 7,777.

The 26-year-old yoga instructor and golf caddie, who describes himself as a “lover of discipline” and “on the path of love and war”, averaged one burpee every five and a half seconds.

He did 362 more than the previous record holder, Mohammad Adil Abdool (Mauritius).

A burpee is a squat thrust with a vertical jump. Both feet must leave the ground during each jump and the body must be straight at the beginning of each rep, or else it is not counted towards the final total.

Matthew’s gruelling record attempt, which took place at a yoga studio in New Jersey, began at 6 a.m. and continued through to 6 p.m.

He split his burpees into 39 sets with a two-minute break between each one, averaging 199 reps per set and sometimes going as high as 300.

His pace began to slow after six hours, so he took a 30-minute break to recuperate for the remaining half of the attempt. 

As 4 p.m. approached, Matthew’s muscles began giving out again, so he was forced to take a one-hour break, during which he managed only 51 burpees.

He then mustered all his energy to perform a monster set of 258 burpees at 5 p.m., taking him past the previous record.

Matthew revealed that he did 52,300 burpees in preparation for this challenge.

Not only did he break this record for his own personal achievement, but as a proud father and husband, he did it to inspire his family.

Incredibly, Matthew performed over 2,000 more burpees than the first holder of this record did back in 2014.

Competition for burpee world records has heated up over the past year.

The title for most burpees in 24 hours was taken by 45-year-old Brian Reyelt (USA), who did 11,988 in one day.

And Habtamu Franke (Netherlands) broke three records doing more difficult variations of the exercise: most chest to ground burpees in three minutes (81), most chest to ground burpees in one hour (1,010) and most chest to ground push up burpees in one hour (957).

But arguably the ultimate burpee record – in terms of both difficulty and duration – has remained unbroken since 2021: the most chest to ground burpees in 24 hours, achieved by Ben Rowlinson (UK) with a total of 9,119.