Burpees exercises are based on using your body weight to do full body exercises. This has some great benefits for you as it works your aerobic and anaerobic systems. In other words you are working your muscles and cardiovascular system very hard at the same time. While I was in the service we use to call this exercise the bend and thrust.
It has many different variations and can be modified for easy beginner or a seasoned fit person. I’ll describe the steps to do the burpees and then tell you about the benefits and how you can adjust them to fit your exercise level.
Here are the steps to doing a Burpee:
1.Begin in a standing position
2.Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground. The squat is a great exercise to increase the strength in your legs and butt muscles.
3.Kick your feet back and you will be in a push up position. No Push up though.
4.Return your feet to the squat position while straightening your arms. Your basically coming out of the push up position to stand up.
5.Leap up as high as possible from the squat position with your arms overhead. I like to reach for sky and give myself a strong jump
Now, you just repeat the steps and do as many as you feel you can comfortably do. I would recommend you start off slowly and work your way up. This exercise will tax your cardio system first add the hardest as you will probably be out of breathe and gasping before your muscle get worn out. This is a nice exercise to use in addition to any weight lifting program or aerobic program.
I really like added this as a nice cross training form of exercise for those who run a lot or do a lot of cardio exercising and don’t take the time for strength training. You can do these like you would most weight bearing exercises. Do 3 set of 10-15 reps. Depending on what type of shape you are in this should give you a good workout.
If you want there are many different variations you can add to the exercise to make it more difficult or a little easier. The way to make it the easiest is to eliminate the jump up at the end. What you have then is a basic burpee. Increase the intensity and strength building is to include the jump and also include a push up. Including both of these will hit your lower body and upper body muscle with just this one exercise.
Some of the variations with this exercise that you can do are:
Do a long jump instead of leaping upward
You could do a step up instead of a jump up
You could also include 2 push ups instead of one
You could use dumbbells at the end or beginning of the burpee
There are an unlimited amount of variations you could do and it really depends on the areas you need to hit to get the workout that you want. Enjoy doing those Burpees!