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Anyone who’s spent time in the military is very familiar with what it’s like to push your body to the limit. However, one Navy veteran went out of his way to test himself by spending close to a day doing lunges across the Bonneville Salt Flats and set a couple of world records in the process.
There aren’t many exercises that will get your legs fired up more than lunges, which primarily target the quads, hamstrings, and glutes that will definitely be feeling the burn if you do enough of them.
There are a number of different variations concerning a technique that involves keeping one of your knees bent at a 90-degree angle while stepping back and lowering your other to the ground.
You can bang out some reps while more or less standing in the same place, but other people opt to walk along a path while attempting them—an approach one particularly brave soul harnessed while doing lunges for over 20 hours.
Navy veteran Mike McCastle set two world records while doing lunges to travel four miles in the course of 20 hours
Michael McCastle spent 11 years in the United States Navy and was gearing up to enter SEAL school when he tore his ACL. In 2014, he ended up embarking on a new journey he dubbed the “Twelve Labors Project” while rehabilitating, and he’s spent more than a decade attempting to conquer some borderline superhuman tasks.
Prior to the start of October, he had completed eight of those labors to raise funds and awareness for causes including Parkinson’s disease and the Wounded Warrior project while claiming a number of world records in the process, including:
- The most pullups in 24 hours (5,804—while wearing a 30-pound vest)
- Longest full-body submersion in ice (two hours and 40 minutes)
- Longest sustained 250-pound tire flip (13 miles in over the course of 10 hours)
Earlier this month, he set out to check off his ninth when he headed to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah with the goal of spending as long as he could and traveling as far as he could while doing nothing but lunges. He got underway on October 11th, kicking off a journey that ultimately spanned 20 hours and 49 minutes while doing 4,769 lunges and traveling 4.06 miles.
The bulk of the distance and reps came during the first hour, as McCastle set two world records by doing 3,262 lunges (nearly one per second) and traveling 2.2 miles over the course of 60 minutes.
It’s unclear what he has planned for his final three labors, but based on his track record so far, there will probably be some more world records in the mix.