Burpees: everyone’s favorite exercise to hate. But they are just so darn good for us.
So, what exactly is a burpee? It is essentially a push up to a squat to a vertical jump. Fun stuff.
Here is how to do a basic burpee:
- Lower down into a squat position and place your hands on the ground in front of you
- Kick your feet back into the push up position and lower your body to the floor
- Raise your body back up and return your feet back to the squat position as quickly as possible
- Immediately jump up as high as you can
Watch this video to learn more.
So, why exactly are burpees so good for us? If you are familiar with burpees you know that they are not easy. They work your entire body and get your heart racing, which is exactly why they are so great to do.
Here are the primary benefits:
- Full body strength workout, working upper body, lower body, and core
- Quickly raises heart rate
- High intensity exercise, helping to increase anaerobic capacity
- Scorches calories
- No equipment needed
- Able to do anywhere and add in any workout
Awesome, right? So many great benefits. Let’s do burpees every day!
Just kidding. It is important to switch things up and not do the same thing day after day. So maybe, let’s do burpees… every three days?
As mentioned in the benefits, you can add burpees to pretty much any workout. #convenient. Let’s spruce up a regular ole 3-mile run by adding in 125 burpees. Ok? OK!
For the .25 mile run sections, push your speed a little bit since they are fairly short intervals. Then bring down the speed a little bit during the .5 mile sections. You’ll need your energy for the set of 24 burpees. Also take a 10-30 second rest after each set of burpees. Catch your breath and get ready for another round.
I will warn you, this is not easy. But man, it is a gooooood.
I did this on Friday afternoon and it was definitely one of those workouts where I needed a mantra running through my head to keep me going. A mantra that I frequently use is “Don’t cheat yourself.” If I am going to spend time in the gym, I might as well make it all worth it. It really helps. Like, a lot.
I did this in my condo building gym on the treadmill, but you could easily do it outside so you can get some color (wear sunscreen though) and Vitamin D.
Let me know if you try it out! Happy Tuesday!
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Christine says
Jenna, this work out was awesome and kicked my butt! It was definitely a nice change from a normal run!
Jenna says
Awesome, I’m glad you tried it! Definitely is not easy…
Linda Broyles says
Ok, workout #1 for my J.Faye month of workouts!!! Don’t know why I picked this one first. It just looked fun. However, I came up with numerous reasons not to do it.
1. My legs are tired,
2. THere is no hard sand at the beach – really hard to run and do Burpee’s in soft sand
3. Got to the beach late and its crowded
4. Bailee poops about a 1/2 mile in and so now i’m doing this in soft sand, on a crowded beach and carrying a bag of dog poop.
5. I got Happy at “Happy Hour” last night.
But even with all those totally legitimate reasons to not do it, I finished it all!!!!!!! I think I entered an alternate universe before I was done! And forgot to mention that I forgot to charge my cell phone so my GPS was gone after one mile along with my motivating music. Luckily I run the beach enough that I think I estimated distances pretty good. I did change it up a bit at the end. I just wasn’t able to speed up my .25’s so I just did 20 second sprints on the last .25 and did a few burpee’s between each sprint. That worked better for me. And I had a pod of dolphins swimming with me as I ran down the beach!!
Jenna says
Linda, I love how you started on the hardest workout! Also, sounds like you had quite the adventure on the beach. Running on the beach is hard enough, much less running and doing burpees! Great work!