Whether you’re into fitness or not, you must have heard of the humble burpee.
Burpees are one of the most exhausting bodyweight exercises.
Some appreciate them, others fear them but without a doubt, they are one the most challenging
bodyweight exercises out there.
They have become a common part of training programs these days.
It is a combination of the squat, push-up, and vertical jump.
Burpees workout your whole body including the core muscles and can increase your cardio
endurance.
Of course, it’s very hard to do.
In today's video we will tell you why you should be doing Burpees everyday.
Whether you want to build muscle, lose fat or simply improve your physical fitness, burpees
can help.
So keep watching!
How can you do a proper Burpee?
A Burpee is a fairly easy exercise to do.
Start with standing erect with your feet a few inches apart and your arms at your sides.
Lower your body into a squat.
Place your hands in front of you on the floor and shift your weight onto your hands.
At the same time, jump your feet behind you while holding your body straight.
Your weight should be on the balls of your feet and your hands, similar to a plank position.
Quickly, jump your feet forward so they land right outside your hands.
As you launch your feet forward, jump into the air and raise your arms overhead.
Lower your body into a squat and repeat.
Burpee Variation:
You can tweak a basic burpee to make it easier or harder.
If you’re just starting out and don’t have the stamina to do regular burpees, skip
the jump until you’ve built up more endurance.
You can even do burpees by placing your hands on an elevated bench rather than on the floor.
This makes the move easier.
The higher the bench, the easier the burpee.
What if you want to make burpees harder?
Include a jump and a push-up with each repetition.
To make it more challenging from a cardiovascular standpoint, increase the tempo.
Do faster burpees!
Here’s a challenge.
See how many burpees you can do in 30 seconds.
Then, try to beat your time when you work out next.
Be prepared to sweat and suck air!
Another way to make the exercise harder is to modify the type of jump you do at the end.
To increase the challenge, do a star jump or jump on to a low box.
Be careful!
This takes lots of agility and coordination.
It’s not a beginner move or one you should attempt until you have lots of standard burpees
behind you.
To add a balance challenge, do single-leg burpees.
Since these are more advanced, don’t try them until you can do at least 10 conventional
burpees with good form.
What Muscles do Burpees Work?
Burpees train your abs, triceps, obliques, shoulders, chest, quads, glutes, hamstrings,
calves and your cardiovascular system.
Burpees not only elevate your heart rate and get the sweat flowing, but they’re also
a dynamic exercise that works most of the muscles in your lower body and your core.
When you descend into a squat, you target your quadriceps and, to a lesser degree, your
hamstrings.
Plus, you also brace your core muscles for stability.
If you modify a burpee by adding a push-up, your upper body, particularly your triceps,
get in on the action.
Health benefits of Burpees:
Now that we have told you all about Burpees, we move on to the actual health benefits.
They target all of your muscle groups: Unlike isolation exercises, burpees are a full body
exercise which incorporate the large, major muscle groups like the chest, back and thigh
muscles.
Apart from the major muscle groups, they also exercise your smaller accessory muscles in
the torso, shoulders and arms.
To perform a burpee correctly, almost all parts of your body are demanded of simultaneously,
and that’s the main reason why they’re so exhausting and effective.
Training those accessory muscles in addition to the core, main muscle groups is really
important.
Without them, bigger muscles can neither work or train efficiently.
They are the ones that give you an athletic appearance, improving your posture, stabilising
the skeleton and making your main muscles appear more apparent.
It makes you stronger: Burpees are a great example of a functional exercise, which means
they’ll not only help you to reach your weight loss and exercise goals, they’ll
also help you perform better during everyday activities.
With every rep, you’ll work your arms, chest, quads, glutes, hamstrings, and core muscles
which will tire you out, but result in you getting stronger and fitter.
The advantages of doing burpees are not only visible from the outside.
There is no other exercise that is so well suited to training strength and endurance
at the same time, also improving reaction time and your coordination.
This is thanks to the complex sequence of movements involved in a burpee and the intensive
use of large muscle groups.
Improves Heart Health: In addition to making you stronger, doing burpees can improve your
cardiovascular health.
When you do burpees, your heart has to beat faster and harder to supply blood to your
muscles.
If you do burpees regularly, the exercise will strengthen your heart over time.
Your heart muscle will not have to work as hard when you are at rest because it will
have become more efficient.
In addition, doing burpees improves the cholesterol concentration in your blood vessels.
The amount of low density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol, which is commonly referred to
as ‘bad cholesterol,’ decreases.
This translates to less plaque in your arteries.
As a result, you will have a much lower risk of heart disease and heart attacks.
Individuals who take care of their cardiovascular health live longer than those who don’t.
They also tend to have a better quality of life, experiencing fewer health problems.
Aids Weight Loss: Doing burpees burns calories, and a lot of them.
An individual who weighs about 150 pounds would burn roughly ten calories per minute
while doing burpees.
If you did them for an hour straight, you would burn over five hundred calories.
Burning calories through exercise can help you with weight management.
If you want to lose weight, burpees can put you into a caloric deficit.
Burning an extra five hundred calories per day will allow you to lose one pound per week
if all other factors are consistent.
Now, an hour of burpees might sound a little excessive, but no one is saying you have to
do an hour of burpees without stopping!
You could break them up into smaller time segments.
For example, try doing ten minutes of burpees and then take a break.
You don’t even have to do a full hour every day; even one ten-minute burpee workout will
torch around one hundred calories.
Builds Endurance: Burpees are remarkably effective for increasing your cardio endurance and your
muscular endurance.
Recommended particularly for distance runners, burpees recruit a very high number of fast-twitch
muscles fibers.
Training those fibers allows the athlete to keep on going, whereas plain running doesn't
recruit anywhere near the same number of fibers -- and so inhibits performance.
Burpees are a combination of resistance and cardio work, meaning that they trigger both
aerobic and anaerobic responses from the body, which is why they're so effective for increasing
your workout capacity.
Cross Trains you for other Activities: Another great benefit of doing burpees is it cross-trains
you for other activities.
It is useful for athletes who play any sport.
Burpees improve your strength, stamina, and agility, which translates well into sports
and other everyday activities.
Burpees are composed of several different movements like squatting, planking, and jumping.
Squatting requires good mobility in the hips, knees, and ankles; this is especially important
for athletes whose sports involve a lot of running.
Lack of mobility can be a source of injury.
The plank portion of the burpee increases strength in the core muscles.
Working your core is not just about getting a six-pack aesthetic; the core muscles are
vitally important in protecting the back from injury.
Finally, burpees require you to move rapidly and jump.
This is especially useful training for basketball players, track-and-field athletes, gymnasts,
and other sports that involve jumping.
Improves Your Agility: Agility is your body’s capability to move quickly and sharply.
It is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and burpees can help you with this extremely
beneficial quality.
Burpees improve your body’s ability to work for multiple joints and muscle groups.
With improved endurance, your whole body coordination and multi joint functional movements, you
are training your body to not just shed excess fat but to be more agile too.
Things you should Keep in Mind while doing a Burpee:
- First, try to go a bit slower and not take a rest rather than going fast and pausing
mid-way.
- Second, don't forget to take deep breaths.
It will help you go on without panting.
- Third, do not arch your back as you enter the plank position, it can cause injury to
your lower back.
- And finally, maintain correct posture and do it under supervision as the wrong posture
can do you more harm than good.
What exercises do you do on a daily basis?
Are Burpees part of it?
Let us know in the comments section below!