REJOICE, GYM VISITORS: The news you’ve been waiting for is finally here. You should stop doing burpees!
No exercise has been more overused — and abused — than this tried-and-true mix of sprawls and jumps, which has earned an intimidating and grueling reputation as one of the toughest moves in the gym. From a practical point of view, however, burpees serve virtually no athletic or functional purpose, at least according to them men health Fitness Director Ebenezer Samuel, CSCS, and MH Advisory Board Member David Otey, CSCS
Worse, the burpee can even put you in danger, especially if you’re being coached by an uninformed or distracted trainer. Burpees require good deceleration when hitting the ground, so there is a high risk of injury to your wrists, shoulders, or elbows.
Simply put, the burpee misses the mark in so many ways, from functionality to dangerousness. There are simply better conditioning and athletic options to choose from than this highly overrated exercise.
Why you should stop doing burpees
Burpees are used to fill time
Just because it looks like it everyone Just because group fitness trainers incorporate rounds of burpees into their routine doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your workout time. In many cases, especially fast HIIT workouts filled with fast burst exercises to get your heart rate up, the burpee can be a trainer’s standard conditioning exercise. It shouldn’t be like that.
Burpees do not provide core stability
A properly performed burpee — performing it with your abs and glutes tight on each rep — wouldn’t be such a bad exercise. In most cases, however, the goal is to do as many repetitions as possible in a short amount of time, throwing all shapes overboard. Because the burpee’s flops and kick-out moves are tiring, it’s almost impossible to simultaneously focus on core stability while trying to survive the round.
Burpees are not a full body movement
Why do we give the burpee such a pushback? Despite its reputation as the ultimate full-body exercise, the burpee doesn’t involve any pulling motions. none! So it’s not as effective as advertised.
3 Burpee Alternatives
3 sets of 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off
Bear crawls are great for improving core stability and movement patterns that you don’t typically incorporate into your daily routine, which can drain you quite a bit of energy doing these exercises solo. Another benefit is that Bear Crawls eliminate the pounding your shoulders suffer from burpees because there is virtually no retarding force with each forward movement.
3 sets of 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off
True, it’s not as accessible as the burpee and it’s not a bodyweight move, but using this machine is the perfect cardio move that covers all the bases in our daily lives – from aggressively hip extension every time we row back, to to horizontal pulling movements, anything you don’t get from a burpee. In other words, rowing trains our body the way it needs to function in our daily lives.
Work for time or repetitions as needed
Just take sprawl (and much of the risk of injury) out of the equation. This is a great option especially as we get older as it is a simple yet effective strength training move. You also change levels and get all the fatigue and conditioning you would expect from a burpee, but without the pounding associated with this overrated move.
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