Another name for a burpee is a squat thrust, but what is a burpee actually? A burpee is a full body exercise which is completed in six steps and provides aerobic exercise as well as strength training. Burpees are effective and challenging, and can be altered to become more challenging as fitness levels improve.
A burpee works out almost every muscle group in your body — including the arms, legs, chest, and core muscles. A burpee increases your aerobic activity, burns calories, and also helps tone and strengthen muscles, but how do you do a basic burpee?
How to Do a Burpee
• Begin in a standing position. The feet should be shoulder-width apart.
• Lower the body into a squatting position, placing the hands on the floor.
• Kick the feet back so you are in a push-up position. Keep the hands firmly on the ground to support the body.
• Lower the chest and do a push-up.
• Bring the chest back up.
• Jump the feet back to the squatting position.
• Stand up and jump into the air while clapping the arms overhead.
Do 15 repetitions to complete one set. If you’re a beginner, try doing 5 burpees in a row instead.
Why Are Burpees an Effective Exercise?
Burpees get your body burning calories and can burn 50% more than regular exercises, as they are an intense multi-muscle workout. Burpees can also help speed up your overall metabolism, helping you continue to burn fat even once you have stopped the exercise for the day. Burpees also improve strength of muscles in your abs, chest, arms, quads, hamstrings and glutes.
Burpees do not require any specialized equipment and are great for conditioning and improving stamina and endurance. They can be used to help improve fitness for almost any other sport as well. You can do burpees to add intense, fast paced variety to your workout program.
How Can You Change Your Burpees So They Never Become Boring?
Try burpee knee jumps by including a knee up. You can add in a box jump on the jumping part of the exercise or add a standing pull up to the jumping up part of the exercise. Change the plank in to a side plank before placing both hands back on the ground for the next step of the exercise, alternate from side to side for a more challenging workout. Increase the tempo and speed of the exercise as you get fitter so that this exercise always remains a bit of an intensive, fast paced, challenging exercise.
Conclusion
What is a burpee without some added spice? Add in extras such as weights on the wrists and ankles or incorporate other additions to your burpees to make them more interesting and challenging for you. Get creative; this will help you improve strength, fitness and fat burning without becoming bored.
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