The Burpees Exercise Will Prepare You For Combat — Well, At The Least Whip You Into Shape

There are many body weight exercises out there that rival even free weight exercises when done properly. When it comes to the burpees exercise, few come close to providing the same range of benefits. Not only do burpees hit basically every muscle group, they are an extremely effective fat burning tool. Overall health (not just looking good) and functional strength are very important — burpee exercises provide a bit of both.

When I think of functional strength and actually being in shape, I’m not thinking too much about going to the gym and busting out 3 of 10 on the flat bench. I’m thinking outside, boot camp and body weight training. Whenever you can combine some of the “pretty boy” workouts with functional workouts, you get the best possible results.

The Burpees Exercise Variations

The burpees exercise is not a complex, difficult to execute exercise, but it sure does get tough after you’ve done them for any decent length of time. If you’re unsure of how exactly to do a burpee you should first know that there are multiple variations of the exercise.

• Standard burpees exercise – The most known burpee exercise is what we’ll call the “standard burpee.” To do this exercise, start standing straight up with your feet shoulder width apart. (1) Do a squat and as soon as your legs are parrallel with the ground (2) kick your legs back so that you are in pushup position (3) do a pushup (4) in one continuous motion bring your legs up under your chest and then (4) jump straight up — that’s one.
• Easy burpees exercise – To make this easier than a standard burpee, do the exact same movements but take out the pushup.
• Easier burpees exercise – To make this easier than the easy burpee, take out the pushup and instead of jumping at the end, simply stand up.

As you can see, there are actually quite a few tweaks you can do to make the burpee either easier or harder. If you are just getting into the workout scene, I’d recommend progressing your way to standard burpees. Most likely though, you’ll be able to start doing the standard version of the exercise.

A Burpee Workout

For me, I like to incorporate the burpees exercise into a workout but I don’t really have a “burpee workout” although there are some hardcore workouts out there. If you’re short on time, the Tabata Burpee workout is an awesome way to get in a great workout in very little time. Otherwise, I think that by doing a well rounded workout that includes burpees, you get better overall benefits. One of my favorite body weight exercises is the “Crazy 8 Workout,” if you haven’t seen that, checkout my article on doing exercises at home.

The Tabata Burpee Workout

• Burpees x 20 seconds
• Rest x 10 seconds

Complete 8x for a total of 4 minutes

Checkout this example video (WARNING: This video may, for some reason, not be black and white)

1 Mile Burpee Workout

When it comes to extreme, hardcore, and just freakin impressive, I’m not sure if this burpees exercise workout can be topped. The burpees for a mile: Checkout this video.

A New Shift In Working Out

What I absolutely love about the fitness industry right now is that there is more and more a movement towards functional training. It’s starting to be more about actually being in shape and actually being fit versus getting as ridiculously buff as possible even if that means you look just plain bad.

A very cool body weight training program that features quite a collection of workouts and exercises is Turbulence Training. The author, Craig Ballantyne has some very impressive and innovative workouts and exercises. They aren’t free but I think most of them are only like $30 so they are well worth it.