How Cory Booker Managed to Stand for 25 Hours Straight

One of the newer metrics in the wearables era is called “stand hours.” It’s meant to discourage sedentary behavior, and according to Apple’s definition, it’s any hour in the day where you got up and moved your body for at least one minute. if you can log a rate of 12 stand hours per day, you’re doing better than most.

We can only imagine what Senator Cory Booker’s Apple Watch data would’ve looked like on Tuesday night after he spent 25 straight hours on his feet. In case you’ve been living under a gigantic rock, the Democratic senator from New Jersey broke the record for the longest speech in Senate history. He spent a full day (plus 64 extra minutes) protesting the recent actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, reading letters from concerned constituents and fielding questions from colleagues. At certain points, he even recited poems and chatted about sports. Whatever it took to keep the speech going.

It’s important to note that this wasn’t a traditional filibuster. Booker wasn’t trying to block specific legislation from the Republican side. He was taking a stand when Democrats — locked out of power in D.C. — have few tangible methods to get their message out or slow down the Trump administration. Along the way, Booker, who is Black, broke a record set 68 years ago by Senator Strom Thurmond, a segregationist who spoke against the Civil Rights Act for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

Whatever side of the aisle people fall on, the machinations of Congress allow for this sort of thing. A senator “usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted,” but they “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously.”

So what does it take to take that long of a stand? At the outset of his speech, Booker said he would speak “for as long as I am physically able.” In order to pull off the feat, he fasted for days and stopped drinking fluids on Sunday night before starting his speech the next day. If you watch highlights, you can see two conspicuously full glasses of water right in front of him. He only occasionally sips from them throughout the 25-hour span.

What Does It Mean to Have a Good “Stand Hours” Rate?

Unpacking one of the newer health metrics on your phone

As counterintuitive as it may seem, fasting has been shown to bolster endurance and mental clarity in certain scenarios. As Booker stopped eating on Friday, and began his speech on Monday, it’s highly likely that his body had already entered a state of ketosis — a metabolic shift where the body, having burned through its glucose reserves, begins breaking down fat into ketones for energy. Given the excitement and passion of the protest, too, you can see how this state would carry him for at least the first several hours, delivering a sense of hyper-focus.

Not that we’d necessarily recommend fasting ahead of your next big presentation at work. Extended fasting can be dangerous without proper preparation and supervision, and especially when coupled with sleep deprivation and physical strain. Booker’s feat was an act of extreme endurance. Remember: the man once played tight end for the Stanford football team. He has a foundation of mental toughness and physical fitness to lean on, literally.

To grind through the second 12-hour period, Booker had his chair removed and he began fidgeting to and fro in his tennis shoes, looking to avoid stiffness and blood pooling. Or, perhaps, he just really needed to go to the bathroom. When the speech was finally over, he said it was time to “deal with some of the biological urgencies I’m feeling.” Some functions, after all, aren’t up for debate.