Be honest for a moment.

If I asked you to do a burpee right now, there’s a decent chance you’d pause. For many men, burpees belong to an earlier chapter of life—high school or junior high gym class, military PT, or a time when training looked very different than it does today.

Most men reading this probably haven’t done one in years. Some remember them clearly. Others mostly remember the feeling afterward.

And that’s interesting.

Stripped of reputation or baggage, a burpee is simply a way of getting down to the ground and back up again—under control, using your own body.

Movements we learn early tend to disappear quietly as capability fades, which is why they’re often the most revealing.

That simple action opens the door to a much bigger question:

How capable is your body right now?

Let’s find out.

Capability sits at the center of this discussion.

By capability, I mean something practical and lived. Having enough physical capacity to move through daily life with confidence. Doing what you enjoy. Handling what needs to be done. Staying independent as the years pass.

Being harder to kill includes many things. Physical capability is one of them. Cognitive health, lifelong learning, mindset, and identity matter as well. Today, the focus stays on the physical side because it’s visible, testable, and foundational.

Healthspan often gets discussed in abstract terms. A clearer way to think about it is quality of life—how your later years are actually experienced.

Many of us have watched parents or relatives spend the final portion of their lives in a steady narrowing of options. More appointments. More medications. Less independence. That experience clarifies priorities quickly.

Capability supports healthspan.

When capability is present, movement remains a normal part of life. Decisions stay simple. As capability grows, options stay open longer.

Improving capability doesn’t promise extra years. It increases the likelihood that the years you do have are lived fully.

If capability matters, the next question is how it’s usually assessed.

There are several well-established tests used in aging and longevity research. Grip strength. Sit-to-stand tests. Walking speed. Balance assessments. VO₂ max. Each serves a purpose. Each captures a specific signal.

They provide meaningful information.

Most of these tests focus on one quality at a time. Standing up from a chair. Walking at a minimum pace. Maintaining balance. Sustaining a cardiovascular workload.

Daily life rarely asks for one thing at a time.

Strength, coordination, breathing, and movement usually work together. Transitions matter. Supporting bodyweight matters. Managing effort across positions matters.

That’s where capability often reveals itself.

For men who care about staying capable, it makes sense to observe how several physical qualities come together in a single task. Something that involves getting down, getting up, supporting bodyweight, coordinating movement, and managing breathing.

That’s where the burpee fits.

A burpee follows a simple sequence. You move from standing to the ground, support your bodyweight, and return to standing. Performed with control, it involves strength, coordination, balance, and breathing as effort builds.

Everyday life is full of transitions. Positions change. Levels change. Bodies are asked to support themselves and reorganize under varying demands. Getting down to the ground and back up again is one of the most telling of those transitions.

A controlled burpee brings several fundamental patterns together:

Each pattern is familiar on its own. Their connection is what matters.

As a reference point, the burpee provides quick, honest information. How smoothly you move. How well you stay organized as effort increases. Where breathing changes. Where posture begins to soften.

That information matters.

Viewed across basic capability domains, the burpee touches a lot in a short window.

Lower-body strength and mobility show up in how efficiently you move through the squat. Core stability becomes obvious as soon as control fades. Upper-body pushing strength matters every time you move away from the floor. Conditioning shapes how long you can maintain composure.

Coordination plays a role as well. Rhythm and timing matter. Small inefficiencies compound quickly.

There are also clear boundaries. Pulling strength shows up only indirectly. Grip under load and external resistance aren’t part of the equation.

Those boundaries aren’t problems. They’re information.

For an equipment-free test that takes little space or time, the burpee offers a broad snapshot of how the body is working as a system. Patterns emerge quickly. Limits announce themselves without much interpretation.

That makes it a strong place to begin.

Time changes the question a movement asks.

Short windows emphasize efficiency. Movement quality, rhythm, and breathing organize quickly.

Extend the window, and different qualities come forward. Pacing matters. Breathing patterns matter. Staying composed as effort accumulates becomes part of the picture.

We see this clearly in A³ testing. In our Classic standards, we test maximum burpees in one minute. Higher-level variations extend that to two minutes. On paper, the difference looks small. In practice, it reveals a different layer of capability.

Other formats extend the lens further. Completing a fixed number of burpees emphasizes efficiency and decision-making. Longer windows bring pacing and consistency into focus.

The movement stays the same. The demands shift.

That’s what makes time a powerful lens. It deepens what the test reveals without complicating the movement.

On its own, the burpee works well as a single measure of capability. It shows how the body handles transitions, bodyweight, coordination, and effort in a short window. It brings a lot to the surface very quickly.

It also leaves a few things lightly expressed.

Pulling strength shows up only indirectly. Grip under load barely enters the picture. External resistance isn’t present at all. Those aren’t oversights—they’re simply the natural boundaries of a bodyweight movement.

What matters is what you do with that information.

If the burpee gives you a broad view of capability, the next step is to fill in what it doesn’t fully reveal—without losing the simplicity that made it useful in the first place.

That’s where the Trifecta comes in.

Rather than adding more tests, more metrics, or more complexity, the Trifecta adds just enough. One movement to cover ground-to-stand transitions and whole-body coordination. One movement to establish pulling strength relative to bodyweight. One movement to introduce load, grip, and trunk stability under effort.

Together, those three movements provide coverage across the major domains that show up repeatedly in daily life.

This is the logic behind minimum effective testing.

Minimum effective testing uses the smallest number of well-chosen movements to answer a simple question: Is the training producing real capability?

Inside A³, we use multiple forms of standards testing—Classic, Baseline, and Capacity—to widen the lens and reduce blind spots over time. That breadth matters. At the same time, if testing were reduced to the smallest useful set, it would look like this:

Each movement contributes something distinct.

The burpee anchors transitions, bodyweight control, pacing, and composure.
The pull-up establishes upper-body pulling strength and recovery across repeated efforts.
The carry introduces external load, grip under stress, trunk stability, and gait.

Just as important as the movements themselves is how they scale.

Pull-ups scale naturally. Bands, assisted machines, ring rows, or bar rows all preserve the same pattern: pulling your body through space. As strength improves, assistance decreases and capacity becomes visible.

Carries scale the same way. A man might begin at 40 percent of bodyweight and progress steadily as posture, grip, and breathing improve. The reference point stays consistent. The expression evolves.

Burpees scale through tempo, range of motion, and time domain. Control leads. Efficiency follows. Capacity builds.

Minimum effective testing starts where you are and tracks progress from there. The value comes from returning to the same reference points and watching them move forward over time.

When burpees become more composed across longer windows, work capacity and movement efficiency are improving.
When pull-ups progress across sets, strength and recovery are developing.
When carries become steadier under greater load, grip, trunk stability, and load tolerance are increasing.

Measured this way, progress tells a clear story.

The Trifecta doesn’t replace the burpee. It completes it.

And that’s what keeps the focus on the gain—capability built deliberately, measured clearly, and compounded over time.

Argent Alpha Athlete, often shortened to A³, is our training and testing program for men over 50 who choose to think and train like athletes.

Athlete here means intention, standards, and capability that supports a high quality of life over time.

Everything discussed in this article shows up directly inside A³.

The burpee reflects transitions, bodyweight strength, coordination, and breathing under effort. Pull-ups or appropriate progressions establish pulling capacity relative to bodyweight. Loaded carries introduce external load, grip under effort, trunk stability, and gait under stress.

Together, they form a simple, repeatable way to test capability and guide training.

Testing in A³ sets direction. It keeps effort aligned with real capability. When limitations appear, the path forward becomes clear: improve movement quality, build strength where it’s missing, increase tolerance to effort, then revisit the test.

That loop is how capability grows—and how it’s preserved.

Men want to know where they stand. This is a simple place to establish a reference point.

Run the A³ Burpee Standard by performing as many clean burpees as you can in 60 seconds, then place yourself:

After Alpha III, the time domain expands. Level IV shifts to maximum burpees in two minutes, where pacing, stamina, and the ability to stay composed become part of the test.

Many of our members—men over 50—have exceeded 20 burpees in 60 seconds, and progress continues from there. At Level IV, we’re now seeing men break 40 burpees in two minutes. Every one of those results followed the same process: establish a starting point, train with intent, and revisit the test over time.

That process keeps capability moving forward.

Capability shapes how life is lived.

Using a small number of fundamental movements as reference points creates clarity. It keeps effort focused. Over time, that approach supports better movement, greater independence, and a higher quality of life.

The burpee opens the door.
Minimum effective testing widens the lens.
The ongoing process of testing and improving is what matters.

That’s what harder to kill looks like in practice.

Capability improves when progress is measured and effort stays consistent over time.

The free Argent Alpha community brings men over 50 together around clear standards, shared language, and accountability that supports long-term execution.

If you’re ready to build capability with a group that values clarity and consistency, this is where that work begins.

👉 Join the free Argent Alpha community