To burn extra calories and make your body slim and fit, you should master the technique of doing burpees. This is a complex exercise that uses almost all muscle groups. Today it is often used in crossfit and cardio training. One of the main advantages of burpees is that it does not require special equipment. It is also not necessary to visit the gym, because you can exercise at home.
Burpee: what is this exercise?
Essentially, a burpee, or burpee as it's also known, is a plyometric exercise that combines a push-up, a jump, and a plank. It was developed by Royal H. Burpee in 1939. It was named after the doctor of physiological sciences.
When performing burpees, the body takes on a vertical and horizontal position in a short period of time. Your heart rate increases, so calories are burned faster. Depending on the phase of the exercise, the triceps, quadriceps, muscles of the buttocks, thighs and other parts of the body are activated.
Burpees: calorie consumption while weights
Since the complex has existed for quite a long time, today there are a large number of its forms. Even every athlete who is well versed in loads can bring something of themselves into this program.
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The most common option is weighting with kettlebells. Their weight will depend on the age of the person losing weight and level of physical fitness. This option increases the mass of resisting force, and, accordingly, the effect of the training will be better.
Some trainers suggest lowering yourself onto your stomach during training. To do this, after the jump, you should lie down on a hard surface and strain your abdominal, abdominal and back muscles as much as possible. The total time delay can be about three seconds.
Using a weighted vest will also increase your overall body weight and therefore increase your workout performance. The main disadvantage here is that you need to get used to the vest and in the summer it will not be entirely comfortable.
Wave push-ups show good results, but this exercise is suitable for already experienced athletes. Push-ups replace holding a straight back, while lowering the upper and lower parts of the body alternately.
You can increase your cardio load by running in place. This sequence of exercises will only improve the result in a short time and help quickly tighten the buttocks.
If the exercises are performed outdoors, you can use a horizontal bar. In this case, after each jump you will need to do one pull-up on the horizontal bar. The number of approaches will be individual.
The most common option is to combine burpees with squats. Some trainers recommend alternating exercises, while others are of the opinion that you should do one burpee and then several squats, depending on your level of endurance. The respite time is 1 minute.
Some athletes like to perform the complex at speed. To do this, you need to have been exercising for a long time, and for people who have just decided to lose weight, this option is definitely not suitable.
Classic burpee
In the classic version, the burpee technique looks like this:
- Take the starting position. Stand straight, place your feet shoulder-width apart. The arms hang freely along the body.
- Take a breath. Lean forward, then squat and place your palms on the floor. They should bear the bulk of the body weight at this moment.
- Take a “lying position”, throwing your legs back. The body forms a straight line, it is parallel to the floor surface.
- Do 1 push-up. Then sit down again, leaning on your hands and knees.
- Exhale, jump strongly. Your arms should go up while jumping.
Without stopping, you need to do a few more repetitions. Then, after a short interval, repeat the exercise.
On a note! Before you start doing burpees, you need to soberly assess your own capabilities. For beginners, this exercise may be overwhelming. In this case, it can be made easier or performed after certain physical training.
Burpee technique for beginners
The exercise can be made easier by removing one of the elements from it. For example, eliminate push-ups.
Burpee technique for beginners:
- Take the starting position. Stand up straight with your feet shoulder-width apart. The arms hang along the body.
- Breathe. Lean forward, squat and, as in the classic version, place your hands on the floor.
- Throw your legs back, resting your toes and palms on the floor. The body is parallel to the floor.
- Without doing push-ups, squat down, rest your knees and hands on the floor.
- Exhale, jump strongly. Raise your arms up in a jump.
On a note! When performing burpees for beginners, you can exclude from it not only push-ups, but also jumping. This will make the exercise easier, but less effective.
Technique
Burpee is a rather complex exercise and requires strict adherence to the technique.
- I. p. Stand up straight, place your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Move from a standing position to a squatting position, with your hands resting on the floor.
- Resting your hands on the floor, move your legs back in one quick movement, taking the position of a plank exercise (lying down).
- Do push-ups from the floor and again take a lying position.
- Jump out of this position by making a powerful push, pulling your legs and body towards your arms and raising your arms above your head.
- Repeat as many times as necessary.
Burpee technique for girls
In fact, the burpee technique for girls is no different from the classic version. However, to increase the effectiveness of the exercise, you can complicate it a little:
- jumping onto a step platform or other suitable height;
- jumping over an object - left or right over an obstacle.
Such changes will allow the calf and gluteal muscles to work more actively.
Burpee exercise for women can be done as follows:
- Stand up straight, place your feet shoulder-width apart. Hands are along the body.
- As you inhale, bend forward, then squat down and place your hands on the floor.
- Take a “lying position” and do push-ups, keeping your body in one straight line.
- Squat down again, placing your hands and knees on the floor.
- As you exhale, jump over the obstacle.
Basic recommendations
At first glance, burpees may seem like a difficult exercise. However, just a few regular workouts will prove that there is nothing difficult about it. The main thing is to master the technique to do burpees correctly.
Experts give beginners the following recommendations:
- you need to start the exercise slowly, because at the first stage it is very difficult to understand and master the coordination of legs and arms;
- if physical endurance is not enough, you can do push-ups from your knees, and skip jumping altogether;
- As you gain experience, the speed of the exercise must be increased;
- The overall effectiveness of burpee depends on proper breathing;
- It is preferable to train in the morning on an empty stomach, which will allow the body to recover faster and also enhance metabolic processes for the whole day.
Burpee exercise for weight loss: how it works
Muscles worked
This complex is a fairly simple way to lose weight, which is easy to master. But still, it has a main disadvantage - it is intense and requires great endurance. When you decide to lose weight with the help of this complex, the main thing to understand is that there is nothing complicated or supernatural in it.
The muscles and ligaments receive the greatest load during this gymnastics. This will be felt almost immediately, so in the first stages the main thing is not to overdo it. A feeling of complete exhaustion may appear after just a few approaches.
The popularity of burpees is based on the fact that after it a large number of calories and unnecessary fat are burned. As you get used to it and increase the number of approaches, endurance develops and the body becomes toned.
During exercise, it is important to choose the right interval so that cardio training is as effective as possible. For optimal results, take a two-minute break after each approach.
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By performing the entire burpee routine correctly, the body literally becomes a fat-burning machine. Some scientific studies claim that high-intensity exercise burns twice as much fat as lower-intensity exercise. Against this background, metabolism always noticeably accelerates.
The most important condition for losing weight is the intensity of the exercise and maximum muscle use. The more energy expended, the more weight will be lost. The main thing to remember is that only your own weight is always used as a burden.
When performing burpees, maximum attention should be paid to the muscles of the shoulder girdle, triceps, deltoid and trapezius muscles, as for the upper body. Also, a separate intense load is given to the buttocks, calf muscles, and abdominal muscles. When performing the complex, the whole body is always involved and the result is cardio training, which provides a weight loss effect.
If you follow proper nutrition, the body will begin to consume its calories. But adding burpees will significantly increase your metabolism, and with the right approach, you can easily lose up to 8 kg in a month of such an intensive program. One completed set of burpees is an alternative to a half-hour jog.
Another important advantage is that specially equipped gyms are needed to perform regular strength training. Visiting such complexes requires time and additional financial costs, which for many can become a limitation on the path to a beautiful and fit body.
Preparation for training
Before you start doing burpees, you need to warm up your muscles. To do this, you will need to warm up before each workout. This may include the following:
- easy jogging (5 minutes) – you can use a treadmill, run in place;
- rotations with arms, wrists (up to 30 times);
- body tilts in different directions (7 times);
- tilt your head in different directions (7 times).
In addition, squats, jumping jacks, push-ups and other exercises will not hurt. They should be light and in no case overload the muscles, otherwise by the beginning of the workout you will feel fatigue and loss of strength. The load received by the human body during warm-up depends on the physical fitness of the person.
How many burpees should you do?
The exact number of repetitions and approaches when performing burpees depends on the physical fitness of the athlete.
On a note! There was a belief in the US Army that a soldier who did 40 simple burpees in 1 minute was in good shape.
Of course, for the civilian population the time frame is somewhat compressed. They can be expanded to 90 seconds, leaving the same 40 simplified exercise cycles as a reference. The number of approaches should be selected for yourself.
The following examples will help answer the question of how many times you need to do burpees to achieve results:
- Tabata method – 20 seconds of continuous exercise with an interval of 10 seconds, 8 approaches;
- classic program - 10-20 times, up to 4 approaches;
- The standard for people involved in sports is 12-15 repetitions in half a minute.
On a note! The record for the most repetitions of burpees, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, was 47 times in a minute. It was directed by an Italian in 2021.
Burpees for weight loss: history of appearance
Hell of a workout
Burpees (some people call burpees) are a full-body exercise used for intense training, the main purpose of which is aerobic exercise . This complex was developed back in the last century by the American physiologist Royal Nadleston Burpee. At that time, the main goal of this training was aimed at maintaining general tone and developing proper breathing.
Later in 1940, in his scientific report, N. Burpi considered this complex as an effective and safe way to assess physical data. At that time, after the re-equipment of the American army, the burpee exercise was part of the program for assessing the level of training of recruits. Then no one could even think that almost a century later this exercise would find another application, especially for those who want to lose weight.
In the American army, this series of exercises was performed at a faster pace, due to which it was possible to determine the physical fitness of each conscript. Initially, the program was simpler because it did not involve such a load; all movements were performed four times in a row to identify coordination and speed.
Today, burpees belong to the CrossFit discipline, which involves performing several movements simultaneously from different positions in one cycle. This ensures that a large amount of energy is expended and the whole body is worked out.
All exercises based on CrossFit are known:
- Exhausting;
- Intensity;
- High degree of physical activity.
This program, when performed for 10 minutes, gives a colossal effect. When testing it in the army, no one could even think that you could actually increase your fitness level in this way.
At that time the training looked like this:
Exercise stages
- Starting position – squat, hands should be in front with support on the floor;
- A jump is made while keeping the hands on the floor;
- The plank position is immediately assumed;
- A jump is made sharply in the opposite direction;
- At the end of the exercise, you must take the starting position.
If a recruit could perform 40 of these burpees in one minute, then he was considered fully fit for duty and in excellent physical shape. At the same time, the pulse of young people was also tested, after which an equation was drawn up to evaluate the work of the heart.
Mr. Burpee did not even think that the original simple exercise would be performed with such intensity by athletes. At that time there was even a publication by him that military modification was very complex. He believed that such a load could have a negative effect on the spine and knees.
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To this day, it is not known exactly when overhead clapping and push-ups were added to the burpee routine. For this reason, if it is very difficult to carry out this program, anyone should be blamed for the difficulty, but not the founder.
Several reasons why you should do burpees
Since burpees burn a huge amount of calories, this exercise is ideal for weight loss. Almost all muscle groups take part in its implementation. In addition, the following facts testify in its favor:
- the cardiovascular system is strengthened;
- physical endurance increases;
- respiratory organs develop;
- You can train at home, without using special equipment or going to the gym;
- it is possible to adjust the difficulty level of the exercise by removing or adding elements;
- for athletes who actively practice strength training, burpees will help build muscle mass;
- This exercise restores coordination.
On a note! If you want to pump up the muscles of the lower body, it is recommended to include two jumps in the complex exercise. To give more attention to your chest and arms, it's worth adding a couple of push-ups. If you need to strengthen your abs, it is enough to pull your knees to your chest in a plank position.
How many calories do burpees burn?
Since burpees are one of the most effective exercises for weight loss, it's easy to imagine that doing them burns a lot of calories. Experts gave approximate calculations and found that for 7 repetitions performed in 1 minute, you can get rid of 15-20 kcal. According to experts, the speed of metabolic processes increases, as with a bicycle printer for 30 seconds. Thus, to burn 100 kcal, you need to perform approximately 35 burpees in 5 minutes. In turn, for 100 burpees done in 14-15 minutes, including several rest intervals with a total duration of 2 minutes, you can lose approximately 225-250 kcal.
However, the above are only average indicators. The exact number of calories burned depends on the athlete's weight. The higher your body weight, the more calories you can burn. On average, you can burn up to 1,200 kcal in an hour.
Thus, burpee is an ideal exercise for people who play sports to lose weight and also want to pump up the muscles of the chest, abs, and arms. Of course, you will have to put in a lot of effort to complete it, and for a beginner it may even seem impossible. However, burpees help you get rid of the same amount of calories in just 15 minutes as you can lose during an hour-long workout on the treadmill.
How is this possible?
This is explained by the fact that during strength training and cardio training, our body uses energy differently.
Jogging at a moderate pace will burn fewer calories than going to the gym doing high-intensity exercise. One proof of this can be considered research by employees of the University of Southern Maine. In their experiments, they concluded that during strength training we spend 71% more calories than previously thought. And even a short circuit workout will burn more calories than running at 10 km/h.
Want to burn even more? Focus on strength exercises with cardio elements - in this case, you will be able to squeeze out maximum energy both during and after training (after all, anaerobic exercise is good because it increases the body’s energy costs even after the fitness session has already ended).
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