Burpees are a terrific option when it comes to bodyweight workouts that target several muscles and raise your heart rate. Despite being less well-known than pushups or squats, it is nonetheless a fantastic exercise.
What is a Burpee?
Burpees are a difficult workout that train most of your body’s major muscle groups. A pushup is followed by a leap into the air, making a burpee effectively a two-part workout.
Burpee can be a little more challenging form of excercise, but the benefits of this adaptable exercise may be worthwhile, especially if you’re wanting to improve your aerobic fitness and burn calories while gaining strength and endurance.
Here’s a look at how to perform burpees safely and effectively. Moreover, we have listed some variations that you can use to customise this exercise as per your calibre.
Why to choose burpees?
If you’re unsure whether to take up burpee as your daily exercise, take into account the following benefits.
Burn calories drastically:
The average person can perform 20 burpees in one minute. If you perform burpees more vigorously, you’ll burn more calories. For instance, 20 minutes of burpees can burn about 250 calories for a 70 kg person.
Offers a wholesome exercise:
Burpee is a form of callisthenics exercise. This means that they resist against your body weight. Burpees are a full-body callisthenics exercise that concentrates on strengthening lower and upper body muscle strength and endurance. Muscles of your legs, hips, buttocks, tummy, arms, chest, and shoulders will get strengthened by burpee exercise.
Enhances aerobic fitness:
Read more: These 5 foods help in muscle recovery after a heavy workout
A high-intensity interval training (HIIT) programme may include burpees. For the aforementioned cardio workout, you must perform brief bursts of hard exercise, followed by a brief rest period.
How to do burpees correctly?
Doing this high intensity workout is very crucial to get the most out of it. Here’s how to do it correctly.
- Start by bending your knees,while keeping your back straight, and placing your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Put your hands on the floor in front of you.
- Kick your feet back so that you are on your hands and toes and in the pushup posture while supporting your weight with your hands.
- Do one pushup while maintaining a straight body from head to heels. Keep in mind not to slouch or stick your butt up in the air.
- Jump your feet back to their starting position to perform a frog kick.
- Raise your arms above your head while standing.
- Quickly leap into the air so you land where you began.
- After you land with your knees bent, squat down and perform another repetition.
Variations in Burpees:
You can slightly mould burpees as per your need and capabilities.
How to make it lesser challenging?
You can adjust the intensity if a regular burpee initially proves to be too difficult.
- Omit the leap:
After the pushup, simply crouch back down to the starting position rather than jumping into the air.
- Leave the pushup out
Instead of performing a pushup if your shoulders or chest aren’t ready, hold a plank position for a few seconds. Alternately, until you have more strength, you might perform a partial pushup.
- Avoid both:
With a squat thrust, begin. The exercise begins similarly to a burpee, but rather than starting in a pushup posture and then jumping up, you simply squat down, kick your legs back into a pushup position, and then return to your starting stance.
How to make burpees more difficult?
There are various methods to increase the challenge of a typical burpee. Here are three illustrations.
- Box-jump burpees
You’ll need a plyo box, bench, or other sturdy object that can hold your weight for this variation.
Instead of squatting down to the floor for a pushup, place your hands on the box or bench and perform a modified pushup while standing in front of the box. Next, ascend the box rather than jumping into the air.
Knees bowed, gently touch the ground, and immediately begin the following repetition.
- Burpee using a Bosu ball
You can use a Bosu ball with the flat side facing up for this variation.
Begin by bending your knees into a squat while clutching the Bosu ball’s outer edges. Holding the Bosu ball, lower your hands to the ground.
While performing a pushup, place the Bosu ball immediately beneath you and place your hands on the flat surface. Then, while standing straight up, hold the Bosu ball’s opposite edges and raise it above your head. Repeat by lowering it to the ground.
- Burpees using dumbbell:
Starting with a squat using dumbbell in each hand, perform the exercise.
Putting the dumbbells beneath your shoulders, squat to the ground. While performing pushups, keep hold of the dumbbells.
Stand still and raise both dumbbells above your head rather than springing up. Return to the starting position by lowering the weights to your sides.
If you can easily control the weights, you can leap while holding the dumbbells for an even bigger difficulty.
Keep your safety in mind:
Burpees, like any workout, are beneficial if you perform them carefully and without getting hurt. Here are few safety tips that you must keep in mind.
- Start out slowly and only perform a few repetitions. Try increasing the number of reps until you are comfortable with the move and can perform it painlessly.
- Work your way up to performing 8 or 10 reps continuously before taking a break and performing another set.
- Burpees can impose additional stress on your wrists and shoulders because you have to lower yourself to a pushup. Go slowly enough to avoid twisting your wrist when you land.
- Before you add weights, more pushups, or leaps, make sure you have the fundamentals of the workout down.
Final words:
Burpees can become tiresome. They are exhausting and difficult, but they are also very effective exercises that can improve strength, endurance, and cardiovascular fitness. Ask a competent personal trainer to demonstrate burpees for you if you’re unclear how to perform them. Also, check with your doctor to be sure burpees are safe for you if you’re new to exercise or high-intensity interval training or if you have a medical issue.
