what is burpee exercise? All you need to know

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The standard burpee exercise is a combination of four different exercise drills into one. It’s comprised of push-ups, planks, squats, and jumps done in a way that repeatedly targets almost every muscle in your body including rotator cuffs, pectorals, biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, glutes, abs, etc.

It ramps up your heart rate, body strength, and cardiovascular endurance.

It was invented as a means of physical fitness evaluation in 1939 by a US physiologist called Royal Huddleston Burpee. This served as a fitness test for his Ph.D. thesis and was employed in the Second World War for the same purpose by the US armed forces.

After about 85 years since its invention, it has remained popular among fitness and exercise enthusiasts. It has often been asked, What is burpee exercise? In this article, we hope to provide an in-depth answer to that.

How to do a burpee exercise.

Below are the basic steps in a burpee exercise in the best possible ways to avoid injuries.

1. Stand upright with both shoulders on the same horizontal level, your feet about shoulder-width from each other, your knees slightly bent at not more than 15%, your feet pointing slightly laterally or outwards, and your hands by your sides.

2. Get into a squatting position keeping a straight back with knees and hips flexed to their functional range.

3. Place your hands on the floor right in front of you with your knees wider than your elbows and without curving your back such that your head and tailbone remain aligned.

4. Transfer your weight to your hands and jump or kick both feet backward simultaneously such that you gently land on the balls of your toes in a plank position. Your shoulders should be right above your wrists and your body inclined in a straight line without sagging your back or sticking your butt up in the air.

5. Bend your elbows as you lower your chest to the floor to do a push-up.

6. At the end of your push-up with straightened elbows, leap to retract your feet such that they get into their initial squatting position with bent knees and hip.

7. As you get your hands off the floor into a standing position, lift your hands over your head and simultaneously take a jump into the air.

8. As you land on your feet from the jump, bend your knees and hips simultaneously to get back into a squatting position for another repetition.

Burpee exercises can be quite tasking. As a result, it may not be suitable for everyone. However, there are ways of making it easier or harder to suit individual goals, objectives, and levels of physical fitness.

A man in plank position.
Image by Taco Fleur

Doing it the easier way,

Many exercise freaks don’t enjoy burpees because of the level of difficulty associated with it. Studies¹ have shown it’s more tasking to the upper body than sprinting. Certain aspects of the exercise can be modified or eliminated to accommodate different stages in your fitness journey. These include:

Getting into the plank position by stepping backward instead of leaping or jumping backward.
Eliminating the jump from the squatting position. You could simply stand and go back into squatting.
Eliminating the Push-up. This may mean maintaining the plank position for a few seconds before going back to squatting.
Eliminating both the push-up and jumping phases.

Doing it the difficult way,

With improvement in your level of physical fitness, you may at a point begin to feel the conventional burpee drills are not just tasking enough. This may have you desiring additional levels of difficulty.

Below are ways you could make your burpee workout more challenging.

1. Multiple pushups: Doing several push-ups in the plank position instead of one.

2. One-limb burpee: Doing the entire burpee exercise using one hand at a time or one leg at a time before changing to the opposite limb after a couple of repetitions.

3. Knee-tuck jump Burpee: At this, you’ll have to bend your knees and pull them towards your chest in mid-air during the jump. You have to put in some extra effort to jump high enough to do this.

4. Box jump Burpee: This involves jumping onto a box at the jump phase rather than simply into the air. You then get down from the box and repeat the process.

5. Dumbbell Burpee: Here, you do the burpee exercise while holding dumbbells of tolerable weight in both hands. You should only involve the jump phase if you can control the weight of these dumbbells while jumping otherwise you may hurt your wrist or even worse.
Make sure the dumbbells don’t have rounded ends to avoid hurting your wrist during the plank and push-up phase. They should preferably have ends with flat surfaces for stability.

6. Bosu ball Burpee: In this one, you do the burpee using a Bosu ball with the flat surface facing up. You lower it to the ground(from the squat position) and place your hands on the flat surface to do your plank and push-ups. Once you get back into the squat position, lift it off the ground and over your head as you stand to jump with it.

Bosu balls.
Image by Isabell Schulz on CC

The difference between the dumbbell burpee and the Bosu ball burpee is simply the objects in use. The dumbbell could be harder depending on the amount of weight in use.

If you think you are strong enough, you may also do a combination of the above-listed harder forms of the burpee. This could mean combining the dumbbell and box jump burpee but you have to be extremely careful not to get hurt. Always use weights you can cope with.

Some variants of burpee exercises.

There are many variants of burpee exercises that have been developed from modifications of the standard one. Below is a descriptive table of 10 of the common ones.

Variants of burpee exercises.
Dumbbell burpee	This is one of those described earlier. Here, you use dumbbells.
Box-jump burpee	In the jump phase, you get to jump on a box and get back down.
Burpee push-up	This is the basic drill involving push-ups.
Jump over burpee	Here, you get to jump over an obstacle at the jump phase.
Long-jump burpee	Rather than jump upwards, you jump forward in this case,
Knee push-up burpee	You rest your knees on the ground while doing push-ups.
Pull-up burpee	Involves doing both the jump and the pull-up or doing a pull-up without the jump.
One-armed burpee	This involves the use of only one arm for a burpee exercise.
One-leg burpee	In this one, you use only one leg for the exercise.
Tuck-jump burpee	You pull your knees towards your chest during the jump phase.
Source: Wikipedia²

What is burpee exercise good for?

1. Calisthenics:³ Burpee is a perfect example of an exercise designed to improve physical fitness and optimal musculoskeletal function without the need for equipment. It can be done just about anywhere with a space whose diameter can just about accommodate your height.

2. Muscle strength building: The workout combines 4 different types of drills that simultaneously strengthen almost all muscle groups in your body.

3. Exercise endurance training: It drives up your endurance to exercise and strenuous physical activities thereby giving you the ability to do much more without getting tired or fatigued.

4. Cardiovascular efficiency: With the way, it quickly ramps up your heart rate it boosts the efficiency of your cardiovascular system. It builds strong heart muscles and increases the tolerance of your cardiovascular system to strenuous activities.⁴

5. Weight loss: By burning fats⁵ and calories, it serves as a reliable means of weight loss and could be very useful as part of your weight loss plans.

6. Cardiopulmonary and respiratory efficiency: Burpee exercises not only build strong heart muscles but also strengthen the respiratory muscles and improve tidal volume as well.
This improves their efficiency in the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to all tissues or organs in your body and the removal of waste products of cellular respiration or metabolism. This effect could reduce the risk of heart disease.⁶

7. Longevity: Research⁷ has shown that people who engage in moderate to vigorous exercises like burpees tend to live longer.

How many burpees should I do?

During the 2nd world War when the US Army adopted the burpee as a means of testing the physical fitness of recruits, the following was their interpretation of fitness levels:

8 burpees in 20 seconds: Poor
10 burpees in 20 secs: fair
13 or more burpees in 20 secs: Excellent.

However, in your exercise program, 10-15 burpees completed within 5 minutes is a good workout. Click To Tweet The impact on the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems will vary greatly depending on the individual’s current level of physical fitness.

Advantages and disadvantages of burpees.

Burpees can be very exhausting yet are very effective in your pursuit of physical fitness. If not done correctly it may also result in injuries, just like most other workout drills.

Advantages.

The advantages are just as listed earlier and include calisthenics, weight loss, muscle strengthening, cardiovascular enhancement, etc.

Above all, one advantage it has over most other workouts is its ability to target almost all the muscle groups in your body without requiring any physical equipment.

It can also be done within quite a limited space and just about any time and anywhere including your office, garage, and even bedroom but please don’t use your partner or dog as the obstacle in a jump-over burpee, even if you have good health insurance⁸ in place.

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Disadvantages.

Not everyone is fit for this workout, especially in the presence of certain medical conditions.

1. Post-surgical joint stiffness: There is usually a reduced joint range of motion following certain surgeries like in orthopedics. To be done properly, burpee workouts demand a full range of motion in the involved joints like the knees and hips. Anything short of this could result in pain and injury.

Technically, you shouldn’t engage in burpee exercises with a poor joint range of motion.

2. Weak cores: It may be wise to first train your core muscles before embarking on burpee exercises. A weak core could make your back sag during the planking phase against which you may be tempted to stick your butt up in the air. These compensatory movements may predispose you to an injury.

3. Heart conditions: Burpee workouts could drive up your heart rate really fast. If you have existing heart disease it may be wise to check with your healthcare provider if it’s safe to include it in your exercise program.

4. Environmental conditions: Though burpee can be done almost anywhere, it’s a rigorous exercise that requires a measure of environmental safety. Doing it on a slippery surface can get you in a hospital’s emergency room faster than it could increase your heart rate.

Also doing it where your child or pet could quickly get in your way without warning should be avoided. Imagine you are at the peak of the jump phase with your knees bent towards your chest and suddenly your pet gets under you just as you are about to descend.

So always make sure the environment is safe for it.

5. Arthritis: You may not be a candidate for burpee if you have certain types and degrees of arthritis. You may be calling for trouble if you go ahead without first consulting your healthcare provider.

I hope this piece was helpful. You may also be interested in the Planet Fitness Total Body Enhancement ⁹ program or low calorie foods¹⁰¹¹ that could be beneficial in your fitness or weight loss program.