If you’ve ever watched one of the many high school/college football or army movies out there, then by now you are probably familiar with burpees—the gut wrenching torture technique, seemingly designed to empty every last drop of energy from the human body and induce sessions of throwing up. Theatrics aside, burpees are a very popular workout tool in the professional sporting world and we think you might benefit from learning how to do burpees too.
First off, how to do burpees correctly:
You start in standing position, then squat, push both feet backwards till you’re in position to do a push-up, then do a push-up till your chest touches the ground and return to starting push-up position, then draw your feet back up, jump up explosively and clap your hands in the air.
Here are some reasons why burpees might just be your secret weapon against excess fat and weight:
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Resistance training
Resistance training forces muscles to work hard and exert themselves against the resistance of an external force or forces and this is the way muscles grow. Burpees are not just any old kind of resistance exercise, though, they are body weight exercises—which are performed against the resistance of the body itself. You might be wondering what difference it makes if burpees are body weight exercises or not? The answer is: a lot. Body weight exercises are particularly good at improving balance, flexibility, strength and endurance, and can be done from the comfort of your own home or even during your spare time at the office to boot, so you definitely should be doing them as much as you can.
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Compound Exercise
As if being such an effective body weight, resistance exercise isn’t awesome enough, burpees are also a compound exercise. Compound exercises are exercises that target multiple muscle groups and multiple joints at the same time. Again, you might wonder what difference it makes if you work specific muscles and joints on their own or if you work them collectively as a compound exercise? Again, the answer is: a lot. When multiple major muscles and joints are being worked out at the same time, you become much stronger and fitter than you would if you were working individual muscles and joints alone.
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Full body workout
Almost every Tom, Dick and Harry of an exercise is labelled a full body workout these days, and while this may be true for some, it might not exactly be true for others. It certainly is very true for burpees though. Burpees combines elements of pushups which target the arms and chest primarily, core, back and lower limbs secondarily, and jumping jacks which target the lower limbs primarily and the core and arms secondarily. Do you see what we’re talking about? Burpees are pretty much the ultimate full body workout.
Although this is true, don’t expect to get massive muscles from doing burpees. It is unusual for anyone to truly achieve a massive body mass from doing body-weight exercises unless you’re spending the whole day working out, which the average person probably doesn’t have time for.
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Anaerobic Fitness
Even though aerobic workouts are all the rage in the fitness world right now, anaerobic workouts are very good for fitness and general health. An anaerobic exercise is one which is done at such a high intensity that the body cannot inhale the amount of oxygen that it needs to support the activity. You don’t need to bother about all the messy technical details of how anaerobic exercise benefits you, we’ll cover that in another article, what you need to know is that anaerobic exercise help to build power, strength and endurance. You’ll also burn calories faster than you can say calories!
Conclusion
Now you’ve heard just how much burpees could benefit your fitness, it’s time to get out there and do them till you get into the shape of your life.
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