It’s the exercise everyone loves to hate. The burpee is a fast-paced movement that works every muscle in your body while raising your heart rate into the stratosphere. Also known as a squat thrust, it’s an exhausting movement that will have you sweating quickly. If you’re up for it, make burpees harder by increasing the pace or doing more of them. You can also make the exercise more challenging by adding a jump at the end of the movement.
Burpees are one of the most time-efficient exercises you can do, as it’s a full-body exercise where you move quickly between positions. You would have to run at a moderate pace for 20 minutes to get the cardiovascular and calorie-burning benefits of 5 minutes of intense burpees. Burpees also have the advantage of not requiring fancy equipment to do them. All you need is a mat and a little motivation.
Who Invented the Burpee?
You might wonder who dreamed up this heart-pumping movement? Appropriately enough, the designer of the burpee bears the name of Royal H. Burpee. In the late 1930s, Mr. Burpee worked as a director at a YMCA in New York City while working on his doctorate degree in physiology at Columbia. As part of the research he needed to do to earn his doctorate, he explored ways to measure how physically fit a person is.
So, what did Mr. Burpee dream up to measure physical fitness? Yep. The burpee. He developed a barebones version of the exercise. Today, there are lots of variations on this basic movement. For example, you can add a jump at the top of a burpee and a push-up at the bottom. But the burpee that Mr. Burpee developed was basic enough so that most people with a little motivation and reasonably fit can do one. Here’s the original version:
- Lower your body and place both hands on the ground in front of you
- Explode your feet back behind you, so your body forms a plank
- Jump your feet forward and stand
One burpee alone won’t improve your physical fitness. To get your heart rate up, you keep repeating the movement. According to Royal Burpee, the idea is to check an individual’s heart rate. Then ask them to do 4 burpees in a row and recheck their heart rate. Continue rechecking every minute and see how long it took for their heart rate to return to baseline. This is known as recovery heart rate and is a measure of cardiovascular health and fitness. The faster your heart rate slows after exercise, the more physically fit you are. A slow recovery heart rate is a sign your heart and nervous system aren’t responding well to the stress of exercise. Studies also link a slow recovery heart rate with a higher risk of death from cardiovascular causes.
Beyond the Burpee
Let’s get back to Royal Burpee, the inventor of the brutal exercise which bears his name. He was so prolific that he didn’t stop at the burpee. He created hundreds of other measures of physical fitness. But Mr. Burpee got a big break in the early 1940s. The U.S. Military chose the burpee as one of the ten exercises they’d ask recruits to do to determine how physically fit they were. The test was simple – ask a recruit to do as many burpees as possible in a specified period.
In time, the military modified the burpee to make it more challenging by adding a jump and/or push-up, but the basic burpee remained part of the assessment process for new recruits.
The Many Benefits of Burpees
Burpees aren’t solely for military recruits. When you do a sequence of burpees, you work every muscle in your body from head to toe. Assuming you don’t stop and rest five minutes between each burpee, the movement will increase your heart rate enough to get cardiovascular benefits and build stamina and endurance. Burpees are also among a few exercises that combine cardiovascular benefits with resistance exercise. By adding a push-up to burpees, you combine upper body strength training and endurance with cardio. That’s what makes burpees so time expedient.
You Can Make Burpees Easier and Harder
What if you can’t do a burpee yet? To make burpees easier, place your hands on a platform before jumping your feet behind you. The higher the platform, the easier the movement will be. Gradually lower the platform as you become fitter until you can do the exercise with your hands on the ground.
To make burpees more demanding from a cardiovascular standpoint, do them faster and do more. You can challenge yourself to do a specific number of burpees or set a time interval and do as many as possible until the designated time is up. For example, do 2 minutes of straight burpees. Once it’s no longer a challenge, try to do more burpees in 2 minutes or extend the time to 4 or 5 minutes. Also include a push-up when you place your hands on the floor, and a jump when you come back up. To make the exercise ultra-hard, make that jump a tuck jump!
The Bottom Line
When you sweat it out doing a set of burpees, be grateful to Royal Burpee who developed this kick-butt exercise that works so many muscles and builds endurance. It’s been around for almost 60 years. That’s 6 decades of people sweating and grunting as they strive to do just one more burpee. Keep at it, and you’ll be able to do more too.
References:
- “Validity of the Squat-Thrust Test Component of the New ….” https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/pes_theses/56/.
- “How to Do a Burpee: Step-by-Step Guide, Benefits, Variations.” 18 Sept. 2019, healthline.com/health/how-to-do-a-burpee.
- “Who Invented the Burpee? – stack.” 16 Sept. 2014, stack.com/a/burpee-history/.
- “The Badass History of the Burpee and the Legendary Man Who ….” mensjournal.com/health-fitness/history-burpee-origin-name-royal-trainer-bodyweight/.
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Don’t Hate Burpees: They’re Good for You!
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