Jan 13 2009
Burpee Exercises To Increase Your Fitness Level
Often we allow ourselves to get boxed in when it comes to maintaining our fitness level. We compartmentalize our fitness. If we want to burn calories and lose weight we do cardio. We hop on a treadmill or a bike or an elliptical machine or if we are really daring we don our running shoes and head outside.
If we want to increase strength or better our muscular tone we do resistance training or strength training or weight lifting. But for whatever reason we rarely think about trying to accomplish both with the same exercise routine. It is one of my goals to challenge your thinking in this regard. You see we can burn calories, lose weight, build muscle tone and build strength quite often through the same set of exercises.
Today I want to discuss an exercise that fits into this category. It will both give you a great cardio workout and help build muscle tone all at the same time. Now I don’t recommend doing this exercise non-stop for 30 minutes for a couple of reasons. First, you won’t be able to perform it for that long and second, any exercise performed for 30 minutes straight is boring. That is one of the reasons I despise running. It is boring. And the ultimate upshot is if I consider it boring then there is a good chance that I just might decide to skip it today. This is not good for developing your fitness level.
The exercise I want to introduce to you today is Burpees. Burpees are a multi-function exercise. They are a body weight exercise that includes a squat, a push-up and an explosive jump. These parts combine to create a lethal fat burning exercise. (It is lethal to your fat, not you.)
Let me describe how to perform a burpee. You will start out in a standing position with your feet about shoulder width apart. The first part of the move is that you will squat down. Then you will quickly place your hands on the floor in front of you and will simultaneously quick your feet back so that you are in a push-up position. You will then kick your feet back to where they started from (removing your hands from the floor) and from the squatting position explode and jump as high as you can. Then repeat and repeat and repeat.
The idea is that the exercise be done in a flowing motion without breaks in between each part. If you are having trouble with understanding my explanation then I have found a video from YouTube for you to watch. The video is from the wonderful people at Crossfit . They even throw a little ring exercise variation in for you at the end.
Burpees are intensive exercises. Try to work your way up to where you can perform 20 - 25 without stopping and work them into your overall exercise routine. You can add 3 or 4 sets to your fat burning workout and I believe you will be pleased with the result.
So get to exercising and let me know what you think of burpees if you have never done them before. See you soon!
