The burpee is an exercise that many of us love to hate. This classic calisthenics move looks deceptively simple but is a lot harder than it looks. Developed by a person named Royal Burpee back in the 1930s, the burpee is a standby in military fitness training as well as in schools around the world. But is it worthwhile adding to your fitness routine?
Definitely! Here are a dozen reasons why you should add 100 burpees to your day.
1. Weight Loss
The burpee is an excellent calorie-burning exercise. That’s because it combines plyometrics and calisthenics into a full-body exercise. You will burn between 8-14 calories per minute when you are doing this exercise. That is comparable to what you would get from running on a treadmill or using an elliptical machine. Yet, the burpee requires no equipment at all.
If you are able to average 12-15 burpees per minute, it will take you between 8 and 10 minutes to perform 100 burpees. That relates to a calorie burn of between 80 and 140 calories. Do around 10 minutes of burpees on a daily basis and you will be able to maintain the daily calorie deficit that you need to lose body fat.
2. Heart Health
The burpee will get you puffing from the very first rep to improve your cardiovascular fitness. It taxes your heart and lungs, forcing your heart to pump harder to circulate the blood around your body and provide your cells with the oxygen that they need to function.
The more efficiently your heart works, the lower your risk of coronary heart disease and the more able you will be to carry out your daily tasks. Your blood pressure will come down and your lungs will work more efficiently.
3. Strength Development
The burpee works a range of muscles in your body, including the chest, shoulders, arms, quads, and glutes. When you perform a hundred of them every day, you will get stronger.
After a couple of dozen reps, you will begin to feel an intense burning sensation in your muscle. This will result in an increase in the sarcoplasmic liquid within your muscle cells. You will, as a result, increase your strength and muscular endurance.
4. Explosive Power
The burpee involves an element of explosiveness when you explode up from the bottom position of the movement. That explosive movement will increase the power of your lower body. Your glutes, quads, and hips will be better coordinated to produce the explosiveness you need to perform in a range of sporting and functional everyday applications that require raw power.
5. Convenience
The Burpee is an exercise that can be done anywhere, anytime with no equipment. That means that there are no excuses and no limitations. All you need is a little bit of space to be able to pump out as many burpees as you can handle.
There are a number of variations of burpees that can also be done without equipment. These include the star jump burpee, superman burpee, push-up burpee, and box burpee.
6. Mental Strength
Doing a hundred burpees in a day challenge is a real test of physical and mental strength. It takes a great deal of mental strength to be able to achieve. You may decide to break your 100 reps down to 5 sets of 20, 10 sets of 10, 2 sets of 50, or, if you’re really game you can pump out a hundred reps in one all-out effort.
Whatever way you carve up your hundred reps, you will need plenty of mental strength to achieve your goal. That will lend itself to all other areas of your life so that when you have a big, challenging task, you will be far better prepared to tackle it.
7. Great for HIIT
The burpee is an excellent high-intensity training exercise. You can use it as the basis of the HIIT Tabata system, where you do 20 seconds of fast reps and the rest for 10 seconds. You then repeat for 8 rounds. Perform your burpees with proper form but go as fast as you can. You should aim to do around 10 reps in twenty seconds.
HIIT training will boost your metabolism after your workout so that you are burning more calories.
8. Can Be Added To Other Exercises
Doing a hundred burpees a day is a real challenge. But, the simplicity of doing burpees means that you can easily add them to your standard workout. Because you don’t need any equipment, they can be done between sets of other exercises.
For example, you can jump down and pump out 10 burpees after a set of dumbbell presses or bicep curls. If you do that after 10 sets, you will be making your main workout far more productive and massively increasing the calorie burn.
9. Greater Functional Fitness
Burpees involve a lot of squatting, thrusting, and kicking back. That will have an immediate effect on your lower body mobility and flexibility. The more flexible you are, the less likely you will be to suffer from falls and injuries. You will also be better able to perform everyday tasks such as tying your shoelaces as a result of your functional fitness will be greatly improved.
10. Improved Cardio Endurance
Doing a hundred burpees every day will massively boost your cardiovascular endurance. It will increase your lung capacity which will, in turn, improve your VO2 Max. That means that you will be far better able to utilize the oxygen that you are breathing into your body as you exercise.
11. Easy Learning Curve
The standard burpee is by no means an easy exercise to perform, but it is quite an easy exercise to master. That means that it is an exercise that most people are able to complete. As a result, you should be able to perform them consistently with proper technique, even when you begin to fatigue.
12. Produces Positivity
Burpees make you feel good. Once you achieve your 100 rep per day goal, you will have a tremendous feeling of goal accomplishment. At the same time, you will experience a natural high as a result of the feel-good endorphins that your body produces with this type of exercise.
Conclusion
Doing 100 burpees every day is a real challenge. But it has a huge payoff. It will improve your heart rate, improve the strength of your entire body, lower your risk for heart disease, help you lose weight, and make you feel great.
Ready to take the challenge?
There’s no better time to start than today!
