How to Do the Perfect Burpee

From www.Greatist.com

Sally Tamarkin

@sallyt

May 12, 2014

The burpee has been around since 1939, when Royal H. Burpee invented the bodyweight movement as a quick, simple way of administering fitness tests and included it in his thesis for a doctorate in applied physiology from Columbia University. Over the last 75 years, the burpee has evolved from its original incarnation—a four-count movement to be performed four times in a row in order to evaluate fitness—to its current version: a six-count movement that includes three jumps, a couple squats, a push-up, and a not insignificant amount of torment.

No Muscle Left Behind

It’s difficult to think of another bodyweight movement as demanding as the burpee. To understand why, consider that the burpee requires a squat, a jump, a push-up, another jump, a squat, and yet another explosive jump. A full-body movement, the burpee calls on just about every major muscle group, so every part of you is working darn hard to bang out just one rep. Plus, as Greatist Expert Eugene Babenkoexplains, “20 burpees equates to more than 20 air squats, 20 push-ups, and 20 jumping jacks,” taking “the body through a very full range of motion requiring a lot of oxygen in a short period of time.” In other words, doing just a single burpee requires a ton of movement and places huge demands on the burpee-doer’s cardiovascular fitness.

CrossFit coach and nutritionist Erica Giovinazzo, MS, RD says that burpees make such a good conditioning tool because they not only require use of the whole body, but also take the exerciser through multiple planes: “If I were to run, or row, or even do something like jumping jacks or jump rope, I'm pretty much staying in one spot, or just moving straight ahead. A burpee makes you go up and down and up and down. This increases the heart rate dramatically” (This also might explain why there are so many anecdotal reports about the miseries of burpees.).

There’s no doubt that burpees are intense—and that’s a good thing. Studies have shown that when it comes to exercise, intensity matters: The more intense the movement, the greater the post-exercise elevation in metabolism and improved cardiovascular health [1] [2].

Now that we’ve promised you the conditioning tool to end all conditioning tools, it’s time to get to it. No more procrastinating; let’s get down to burpees.

How to Do the Perfect Burpee: YMMV (Your Misery May Vary)

Burpees come in all kinds of variations—some coaches or gyms may require a push-up; others won’t mind if you modify the movement by skipping the push-up altogether or substituting walking your feet forward and backward one-by-one rather than jumping them up and back. But here are the six movements of the burpee as it is most commonly done:

1. Bend over or squat down and place your hands on the floor in front of you, just outside of your feet.
2. Jump both feet back so that you’re now in plank position.
3. Drop to a push-up—your chest should touch the floor. You can also drop to your knees here, which makes the impending push-up easier.
4. Push up to return to plank position (this can be a strict push-up, a push-up from the knees, or not a push-up at all (i.e., just push yourself up from the ground as you would if you weren’t working out)—your choice).
5. Jump the feet back in toward the hands.
6. Explosively jump into the air, reaching your arms straight overhead.

Burpees on Burpees on Burpess

So now you know how to do a single burpee. But where does that leave you in a workout that requires several reps in a row? Or 100? Or—gasp—a mile of them? Take it from CrossFit coach Erica Giovinazzo, who does plenty of burpees and programs them for her athletes. Here are her five favorite tips for getting through a burpee-heavy workout, in her own words.

1. Don't rest. Pace. If you stop [in the middle of your reps], it only takes longer to get going again. Most people need to stop because they’re going too fast, but the best thing you can do if you’re doing a lot of repetitions is to go "slow" and steady: Pick a pace you can maintain for however many burpees you need to do, and don't stop. So if you only have to do five to 10 burpees, you can go a little faster. But if you’re doing 50 burpees, go slower so you can maintain a consistent pace.

2. Feet go before hands. If you want to take a second off of your burpee, shoot your legs back before your hands hit the ground. When most of us first learn a burpee, we usually learn that our hands should hit the ground before we jump our feet back. But once you understand that basic movement, you can shoot your feet back before your hands land on the ground.

3. Turn on robot mode. When you have a lot of burpees to do...stop thinking about how man burpees you have to do. Just go into robot mode. Approach each small movement one at a time: "drop to the floor," "feet back," "jump up," etc., and repeat. Just slip into auto-pilot and keep counting. Thinking ahead too much gets you freaked out about how many you have left to do. Just keep moving and focusing on one movement at a time.

4. Breathe! As much as you can, try to get into a rhythm with your breathing. Experiment with what works for you, recognizing that as you get more out of breath your rhythm will change slightly. But always try to keep your breathing as steady as possible.

5. Avoid common faults. Many people fall prey to two faults. The first is arching the back to come out of the burpee, as if they were doing an upward dog pose. This can to an aching lower back. The second fault is losing range of motion. The chest should touch the floor, not just the belly button or pelvis. The hips need to open up all the way at the top when you jump. Try looking straight ahead as you stand up and jump— this can help you to remember to open your hips.

Now that you've perfected your burpees, are you ready for this challenge??