Who doesn’t love Burpees?!  Most of you are probably shouting, “ME!!” as you read this.  If you are not sure what a burpee is, don’t listen to the others.  Burpees are one of the best exercises out there.  There are a number of benefits to the burpee, but first, lets break down the burpee, step by step (modifications will be indicated by parenthesis):

Begin by squatting down and placing your hands on the ground.  Next, jump (step) your feet back, assuming the plank position.  Drop all the way to the ground.  Push yourself back up to a plank position, jump (step) your feet in, and jump (stand) up.  That is one repetition.

Reasons to Love Burpees

• Improve Strength and Stamina- Burpees recruit the chest, shoulders, triceps, core, quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, heart, and lungs.  Not only are they a great strength training exercise, they are wonderful for improving endurance.
• Burn Fat- Being a full body, high intensity exercise, performing burpees is one of the best fat burning exercises you can do.  High intensity exercise(s), being anaerobic in nature, have been shown to not only burn more fat during the given bout of exercise itself, but also in the hours following the exercise (EPOC – I will explain this in a later post).
• Do Them Anywhere– You don’t need any equipment or a gym membership.  All you need is a space large enough for you extend all the way out and up!
• No Cost- Free to do, anywhere!
• Challenging- “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

If you have not tried burpees, I strongly encourage you to give them go!  I would recommend starting out with just a few at a time and see how you feel.  For those seasoned “burpeeers”, try my favorite burpee workout, Tabata Burpees!  When doing Tabata, the goal is to go 100% each 20 second round, performing as many repetitions as you can, maintaining proper form.

Tabata Burpees:

8 rounds of:

20 sec. burpees

10 sec. rest

Happy Burpeeing!