30,000 Squats in 30 Days Fitness Challenge

I did 1000 squats a day for 30 days and this is the complete story. So this video will be separated into 3 parts. The first of which will be everything that happened before the challenge. So that'll be my prep, my reason for doing it, all that kind of stuff. Then the second part of the video will be a complete walkthrough of everything that happened from day 1 to day 30 and how that affected my body and my mind throughout the entire challenge. Then part 3 will be a Q&A from all of you guys from my Instagram audience which you That'll include my recovery methods, funny stories, all that kind of stuff so make sure to stick around until then. Also if you want to skip to any specific part, make sure to use the timestamps below. And now let's get into part 1. So first it wouldn't be right to not start off with the origin of the entire challenge. So if you aren't familiar with my channel, I've been doing challenges relating to many bodyweight exercises for a few years now, ranging from 1000 burpees to 1000 squats. But most of them were within a day or so. The challenges were constricted to a 4-5 hour time period. So none of them actually lasted for more than a 24 hour period, at least they didn't affect my life for more than a 24 hour period. Then one day a friend of mine and me were brainstorming ideas for a challenge, sort of joking around, just thinking about whatever I could do. And he mentioned, why don't you do a 30 day thing, maybe, I don't know, 30,000 squats in 30 days. As in, if there were some sort of exercise that I could do, because I do a lot of challenges that involves 1000 reps of an exercise, so if I could take that and apply it to every single day for 30 days, would that be possible, would that be safe and healthy and a good idea. And the exercise that is easiest on the joints and the body and overall would have the least impact on my long-term health would be squats. So three days, I think, after that, I just started and that's when I started officially doing 1000 squats a day for 30 days, as well as sharing the challenge every single day on the TikTok account at 1000reps. Then as for prep beforehand, as I said, the date from the idea to actually starting it was only two or three days. So I didn't do any actual sort of targeted prep whatsoever, as in I didn't do 100 squats a day for 30 days, 200, 500, I didn't do any sort of build up like that, I went from nothing straight into it. However, as I say that, I want to say two things, make two points. The first of which being, what I did is not healthy, it's not good for you. If you want to get stronger, build muscle, lose some weight, whatever it may be, doing something like that is not the way to do it. It's not the optimal way, it's not the healthy way, there is an extremely high likelihood that you will get injured. I was able to pull it off because I have been doing things like this for years, I'm very experienced in those types of challenges. Second, my age, I am young, my body can handle that type of stuff, I don't have a prior history of any injuries or anything like that that would sort of hold me back. And third, my recovery was on point. I spent two to four hours a day on recovery, I'll go over some of those recovery methods later, but just for now, know that really my recovery is what enabled the challenge to be what it was and if you don't do that, you will get injured 100%. That's my why and my how, let's now get into how I actually did it and how I felt and did throughout those 30 days. So first, we have to obviously start off with day one and here I want to make a very important point. That is, people view 1,000 squats as something that would sort of dominate my entire day, you know, as in, be defining the climax of that day, but really, 1,000 squats throughout the entire challenge took anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes for me. So it really wasn't, you know, a super important part of my day, it was just something that I could wake up, you know, if I woke up at 7am, I'd have done by 8am and then I'd go to breakfast and I'd have done it on my day. You know, the 1,000 squats was not sort of the defining portion of my day throughout any of that challenge. Also, I found it sort of nice to be able to have an hour a day, roughly, where I could just put on some music or a podcast and just get in a zone, you know, and push myself. And day one was a reflection of that. I did enjoy sort of getting back into that zone, especially with the thought that I would be able to sustain that for much longer than just, you know, within a day. So day one and day two overall felt really good. You know, I was enjoying it, I was enjoying that time and my squat times reflected that. On day three, I did get a little tight, a little sort of sore, but I took a bath with Epsom salt, which is one of those recovery methods that really, really helped me throughout it. That, combined with stretching, some creams, all that kind of stuff, really just got me good for the next few days. On day five, I actually hit a PR, a record time of 34 minutes and 6 seconds. So normally throughout the entire challenge, I split the squats up into sets of 50, but on that day I went in sets of 100. I think that was a little overambitious and I did sort of suffer and feel the results of that over the next few days, but on that day I did get a really, really good time just by splitting it up into sets of 100 instead of sets of 50. Then on day seven, I started cross-country and this is where the challenge got a little gnarly. So that first week was Thanksgiving break, so I was at home, you know, I didn't have much to do. You know, I didn't have school, I didn't have any of that, but the start of school also came with the start of cross-country. I was now doing 1,000 squats a day, plus going to the gym, plus doing cross-country. Of course, I wasn't doing leg workouts in the gym, but overall it was quite a lot of physical activity and that was those two weeks where I did have school and cross-country and the gym and the squats were definitely the toughest sort of portion of the challenge. So yeah, that first week from day seven to 11 and 12, somewhere in there, those five days, because I wasn't running on the weekends, was really the low point of the challenge. You know, I would wake up feeling sore, a little bit of tight, or a little bit tight. I never got to the point where it was bad, per se, but I definitely wasn't at 100% while doing the squats and doing the running. However, that second week I fell into a routine from day sort of 11 to 15. At that point, I'd been doing it for more than two weeks at that point, and I would find some way throughout the day, some small period of time to get those squats done, and then I'd go, I'd either go in a sauna, use the Epsom salts, I'd use grounding mats, I had started to sleep on those, I also used a lot of recovery creams, I think Penetrex right here is my favorite, I'm endorsed by them, and also, of course, a lot of stretching. So all that really contributed to me staying healthy throughout the, especially those two weeks, but also the entire challenge at large. So then, from days roughly 20 to 27, everything went great, you know, I was getting the squats done, I was doing running and feeling good, really everything just felt good, and also my gym shut down so I went to bodyweight workouts instead of the gym, so also it was a lot more stuff at home which made the squats somewhat easier. This however is where it started to get a little wacky. So the way I view 1000 squats for me is how you may view 500 or 100 or maybe 50 squats a day for you, as in, it wasn't strenuous enough that it was, it would be considered within let's say a day really hard for me, but if you do it over 30 days it is difficult, you know, so I'm sure there's that number for you, you know, if you did 10, 50, or 100 squats a day, you could do it per day, but it would get difficult as it added up, and that point for me when all the squats started to really add up and take a toll on my body was around day 27 or 28. That's when I started having to break my squats from sets of 15 to sets of 25, my legs started to feel sore just all the time, that was when I really felt like I hit a wall, sort of like you would, you know, in a marathon, and that is really when it started to get bad. Luckily by that point I was, I only had what, 2 or 3 days left in the challenge, so I was able to make it through, but I do think if I just, if I kept doing that for, I don't know, another week I probably would have either hit a wall, a failure, or gotten injured. So 30 days was I think near my physical safe and healthy limit. But I did make it, and I went up this mountain near my house to do the last squats, you know, just enjoying the sunset, I grabbed a donut I think, and really just reflected on that experience. So overall it was an incredible experience really, it was something that I honestly didn't know if I could do, and I haven't seen anyone else actually do, as in I haven't seen anyone else on the internet actually record their experience, so the fact that I could do something like that that's kind of new, and hopefully inspiring to a lot of people, I know a lot of people were inspired to do something like that, not a thousand, you know, but 50 or 100 per day, you know, that's really humbling, and that's in part why I do these. So that's the complete walkthrough of the 30 days, and now let's get into the Q&A. So we got about 50 responses on the Instagram Q&A, if you want to be a part of future Q&As, Instagram is at John Law Fitness, so make sure to check me out there. And now let's work our way through some of these questions. Okay, which day was the most difficult? If I had to pick any single day, it would probably be day 8. I woke up really sore, just wasn't in it, wasn't feeling good, but I did manage to thankfully limp through those squats just by breaking up the sets into smaller sets. How many inch increase? So a lot of people were asking for my vertical, in terms of the actual numbers, I know I did get 29 inches after, but I didn't have a before vertical, unfortunately. However, I was able to dunk both a tennis ball and a small ball, you can see that video right here. That's something I was never able to do before, so the fact that I could do that I think is really reflective of the improvement. Okay, how much gains have you made? I want larger legs. So I did have these measurements, thankfully. My right leg gained 2 inches in total circumference, and my left leg gained 1 inch in total circumference. That's about 5-10% of the total mass. My theory of why my right leg gained double what my left leg gained is because I am left handed, I'll use my left leg on pretty much everything I do, more so than my right leg, so the fact that I worked them both equally in the 1000 squats made the right one grow more than the left one. So due to that, I wouldn't recommend this if you're trying to get larger legs or get any sort of mass increase. This is not the way to do it, it's certainly not the optimal way to do it, nor the healthy way to do it. If you want to gain mass, just start to eat better and then go 2-3 times a week to the gym and do leg workouts using a variety of machines and free weights as well as some cardio. That will get you more results than doing something like this ever will. What did you learn from this challenge? That's a fun one. So if I had to think about it, I'd say just the power of focusing sort of not on the entirety of what one may be doing but sort of, at least for me, it was one specific day, then part of that is 1000 reps, then 100 reps, 50 reps, just that set. If I can get through that set, all the sets in a day and then do that for 30 days, I did it. But just thinking that I would have to do 30,000 squats or 20,000 on day 10 or 10,000 on day 20 would be super overwhelming. So it was sort of just, if I can do this set, I'm good, then I do the next set, then I'll be done with the day and then I'm done with the challenge. So just the power of that I think is something that I sort of really took away from it. Did I think it would be easy? I honestly didn't know what to expect because I've done the 1000 squats before for a video and 2000 squats actually and neither of them were as hard as I expected. So I knew it would be difficult in the sense that it was just a lot, it was an extremely large workload, but at the same time, I didn't think it would be too difficult that I couldn't do it, which is exactly what ended up happening. Weren't you sore? I think if I had been sore every day, straight off from day one, it wouldn't have been something I could finish, as in I would have just hit a wall and hit failure. So I was, it depends on what you mean by sore. I think I was tight, certainly, and maybe a little soreness, probably three or four days throughout the entire challenge. But again, my recovery was really, really honed in, so I wasn't sore every day, I wasn't sore regularly. How did you break up the reps per day? So I already mentioned this, but just to recap, I would typically go into sets of 50 followed by short breaks, so just 20 sets of 50. Sometimes if I felt good, I'd go with 10 sets of 100, which did end up giving me a better time, typically. And if I really wasn't feeling good, such as in the last few days, I would go into sets of 15 and or 25. When will we see the transformation? Super excited. So the transformation video is out on TikTok, you can see that right here. But as a treat, let me just play the video for you right now. I just did 1,000 squats a day for 30 days, and here is my transformation. This is me before the 30 days, and this is me after the 30 days. So I did gain one inch of size in my left leg and two inches in my right leg, so great improvement there. I think I also did shred a little body fat, I think I am sub-10% now overall. So it is somewhat difficult to tell real difference since the lighting wasn't standardized, but I definitely did feel myself get leaner. I noticed there was a lot more vascular especially, and a lot more mind-muscle control. I feel like I can move that sort of inner part of my quad more than I could before, and I didn't really notice a huge difference in terms of size. If you have any challenge ideas, make sure to comment them below. Other than that, that is the video, and thank you so much for watching.