Pushups and squats feeling a little boring or repetitive lately? Then maybe it’s time to combine them. That’s the idea behind burpees, which target all your major muscle groups by combining the movements of a pushup, a squat, and a jump, all in rapid succession.
Categorically, burpees are considered a plyometric exercise, meaning they entail bursts of intense, powerful movement—just like skipping rope or doing box jumps. Burpees use your whole bodyweight for resistance, so you build strength while burning energy and improving your speed and endurance from the rapid movement. When you do burpees, you’ll be engaging (and in turn, strengthening) your glutes, quads, calves, core, shoulders, chest, and triceps. Burpees also improve your mobility, posture, and balance.
You might even be surprised by just how effective burpees are, from a cardio perspective. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sports looked at how burpees compare with sprinting as a form of high-intensity interval training (sometimes referred to as HIIT). Test subjects did an intense workout of sprinting and burpees a week apart from each other, and researchers found that burpees caused more fatigue than sprinting did.
But maybe the best thing about burpees is that you don’t need any special equipment or facility to do them. You can do them outside or inside, even in the smallest of rooms (just make sure you have enough overhead space and won’t hit the ceiling when you jump). Burpees might even be more convenient than sprinting because you can do them barefoot.
How to Do a Proper Burpee
If it helps, you can think of a burpee as going from a squat to a plank to a pushup to a plank to a squat to a jump. But that can be a lot to process, so consider each step of the movement individually before you put them together:
Start standing with your feet shoulder-width apart and your hands down by your sides. Drop into a squat, bending your knees and lowering your hips down as far as you can go while remaining stable.
Drop forward and place your hands on the floor in front of you, shoulder-width apart, assuming a pushup pose. Kick your legs out behind you so your bodyweight is resting on your hands and toes. Lower your chest to the ground and perform one pushup; then return to your planking position.
Bend your knees and kick your feet forward to move back into squat position, ideally in one fluid motion.
Jump as high as you can, using your quads and glutes to push yourself off the ground. Raise your arms above your head and reach.
Land with your feet shoulder-width apart and begin the rotation of movements again. Repeat quickly and without rest until fatigued.
Get the most out of your burpee workout by setting a repetition goal (for example, you’re going to do 10 burpees, or maybe even 25 burpees!) or set a timer and see how many burpees you can do in one minute. Remember to prioritize form—a few well-done burpees are better than many sloppy burpees, as these are most efficient at building strength while avoiding injury.
