Please find below a press release on Idai Makaya’s recently achieved new world record for the most squats completed in 24 hours. If you have more detailed questions don’t hesitate to contact Idai Makaya.
20 March 2024: Milton Keynes Man BREAKS Squats 24 Hour World Record on his 50th Birthday.
WHAT: An attempt to break the 24 hr Squats Guinness world record (target was 25,000 squats). Idai achieved 27,000 squats in 23 hours and 50 minutes, breaking the world record by 2,000 squats. This new world record is still pending ratification.
WHEN: 17-18 March 2024.
WHO: Idai Makaya (50 years old). A professional Health, Weight Loss & Fitness Coach based in Milton Keynes, England. You can read his Bio here.
WHERE: Bodystreet Fitness Studio (Milton Keynes, UK).
WHY: In memory of Idai’s late brother Garai, who died in a skydiving accident. The intention of the event is to raise £7,000 for a clean water supply at an orphanage in Zimbabwe.
EVENT WEBSITE, NEWS & LIVE VIDEO COVERAGE: Full details of this world record attempt (and live video recordings of the full 24 hour challenge) can be found on this link. Press representatives were welcome throughout the 24 hour event and ITV News covered it (full press picture and video library, including the ITV News reports, can be found here.
OTHER MEDIA COVERAGE:
Previous TV and print media coverage of Idai’s previous world record challenges can be found on this page.
INTRODUCTION: Idai Makaya is a 49 year old Health & Fitness coach who runs a fitness studio in Milton Keynes, England. He is also a long-distance cyclist and a multiple ultra-endurance fitness world record holder.
Idai lost his brother Garai on 11 Feb 2017 in a skydiving accident which occurred in South Africa. The accident occurred on the day Garai had just completed his training to qualify as a skydiving instructor. Garai had been a keen skydiver who used his skydiving activities to raise money for charitable causes in Botswana. After Garai’s death, Idai committed to raising £80,000 for charitable causes in Southern Africa, to continue his brother’s fundraising legacy.
He started a series of fundraising world record challenges in June 2018, when he completed a 1,720-mile endurance ride twice across Britain (from Land’s End to John o’Groats and back again) on a stand-up bike. He covered 155-miles a day for 11 days & 10hrs to set a new Guinness world record. His second world record challenge was to break the world record for the most chin-ups in 24 hours, which stood at 5,094 reps. Idai was able to break that world record in September 2020 when he completed 5,340 chin-ups.
Idai has spent about 2 years preparing his body to squat more than 25,000 times in a row and aims to complete the challenge on 18th March 2024, (his 50th birthday). So this world record attempt will be a celebration of his brother’s life and also his 50th birthday!
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT IDAI’S TRAINING: As a fitness coach, Idai specialises in using advanced technologies to enhance the fitness of his clients and he also utilises these same technologies himself, for his world record training.
Idai specialises in an advanced fitness technology called Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) which allows the muscles to work much harder and contract more fully than they naturally are able to – all without stressing the joints. EMS training allows all the muscles on the body to contract up to 95% of their fibres – simultaneously (conventional exercise uses less than half the muscle fibres at any one time and cannot address all the muscles at the same time). So using EMS allows athletes to generate more power and better endurance from fewer (and much shorter) exercise sessions. It also speeds the metabolism, allowing maximum leanness (meaning that Idai can carry less body weight during his challenge). More information can be found on his fitness centre website.
Idai also uses a stand-up bicycle called an ElliptiGO for his cardio and endurance training, which allows him to ride standing up. This bike has an elliptical pedal motion and is ridden standing upright, without putting any stress on the joints. It helps him develop the lower body and cardiovascular endurance needed to stay on his feet for a full 24 hours, but the training is more pleasant than squatting, and places no stress on the leg joints. He’s built up his leg endurance by riding the elliptical stand-up bike for up to 200-miles at a time.
Idai also uses a specialised device to cool his body core during heavy exercise. This device cools the body through the hands and has been shown to allow considerable improvements in strength and endurance in athletes who use it regularly, because keeping a constant temperature allows athletes to sustain a higher workload for a longer time period. You can read more about it here.
In his routine training sessions for the 24-hour squats world record challenge Idai would complete up to 7,000 squats, in a once-weekly workout. He trained in a fasted state – taking in no food on training days, until after the training was completed (he just drank water and electrolytes) because that improved his ability to process energy from his body fat. However, during the world record attempt, Idai ate regularly to sustain himself throughout the 24 hour period.
CONTACT DETAILS FOR IDAI MAKAYA: Contact Me Here. Photos on this website can be used with permission in any articles relating to this event.
OTHER PRESS RELEASES:
From CET Ltd.
This press release appeared in Health Club Management Mag and this press release appeared on the Open PR website (both released by CET Ltd, one of Idai’s equipment suppliers) explaining how Idai will use temperature regulation technology to improve his physical performance in the 24-hour squats world record attempt, taking place at Bodystreet Milton Keynes on 17-18 March.
We also use the same technology with our personal training clients at Bodystreet Milton Keynes – mainly those with conditions adversely affected by overheating, such as MS, Long Covid, and various chronic fatigue syndromes, or people whose medications can cause severe overheating during exercise (such as antipsychotics).
Everything we learn through extreme performance experiments can usually filter down to many other practical and seriously important general health goals. Every difficult endeavour we undertake often carries great long-term value…