Burpees: pardon me….

Burpees are the final exercise in my Top Ten. And what an exercise to finish with!!

I had a few comments when they appeared in the top ten. Most comments went along the lines of how hated burpees are. Most of the hate came from the fact that they are a tough exercise! Tough yes, but what a great conditioning tool. No kit required, not even a bar to pull yourself up on, all you need is yourself and some attitude.

Now as with most exercises a certain amount of controversy surrounds Burpees. Some claim that the Burpee is contraindicative and others disagree as to how they should be performed. We’ll tackle each of these one by one.

Firstly though, a Burpee is performed as follows: an individual starts standing, from here the person then squats down and places their hands on the ground just outside of their feet. Next the person throws their legs back so their body is in a press up position, now depending on how you’re instructed to perform them from here you perform a press up where your chest touches the floor or you miss this step and bring your knees back to your chest and your feet below your body, where you then stand up and jump, lifting your arms above your head. This is one repetition.

If the Burpee is performed correctly it a fantastic strength and conditioning exercise using every joint in the body. If you are performing it with the press up option it strengthens the pressing muscles of the upper body. The lower body and posterior chain in particular are strengthened twice, both on the way down and on the way up. As the legs are being thrown backwards from the press up position the glutes, hamstrings and erectors all extend. Triple extension across the ankle, knee and hip also occurs as the person is standing up and jumping. However it’s not only triple extension across the joints of the lower body that is trained, triple flexion also occurs. Triple flexion across the ankle, knee and hip is as equally important as triple extension, it develops the dorsiflexors of the ankle, hamstrings at the knee and hip flexors as well as the lower abs.

Those that claim that it can be a contraindicative and dangerous exercise just aren’t performing it properly. There are no bad exercises, just exercises performed badly. The area in question is the lower back. Now if anything as the Burpee strengthens the posterior chain it should help to obviously strengthen the lower back. The problems arise when people performing the exercise don’t fully extend the hips, both when they extend their legs into a press up position and when they are standing and jumping. By not extending the hips properly the hip flexors tighten, inhibiting the glutes and as a result the erectors do more than they should and the lower back my become hyper mobile during the exercise- this is not what you want to happen. It’s easy really just make sure you extend your hips- twice!

As well as triple extension, triple flexion and developing upper body strength, the Burpee is also a brilliant cv conditioning tool. The heart and lungs get a great workout as the body moves very quickly from a standing to prone lying, back to a standing position very quickly. This postural change as well as being great for the heart and lungs is very important for athletes who have to get up and down off the ground very quickly.

Before performing Burpees you’ll need to perform a decent joint mobility warm up involving every joint in the body and you’ll need to get your heart rate up. You need to be able to perform a press up and a squat, but outside of that you have no reason no to start Burpeeing right now. Except for unwanted body fat that will just drop away, you’ve got nothing to lose- throw in some sets of burpees at the end of your session today!!

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