A Few Tips for Performing Burpees

Most of us have heard of them- the dreaded burpee. Most of our fitness classes or personal trainers push us through this excruciating exercise that most of us view as torture. It has become a common exercise in many fitness routines because of how effectively it can engage your entire body by utilizing full body movement. It is because of all the hard work and energy required to help our bodies achieve this full range of motion that helps us accomplish our fitness goals and dread the very word known as burpee. Here are just a few tips to help you achieve the full impact of this exercise.

• Pace yourself. You do not want to stop in the middle of a burpee set. It will be next to impossible to get going again. You want to make sure that you pick a pace you can keep up with consistently throughout your routine. If you are doing a few burpees then you can increase your speed, but if you are going for multiple burpees then you need to slow down and pace yourself to ensure that you will not have to take any unnecessary breaks.
• Feet then hands. When performing a burpee most of us learned were taught that we needed to wait until our hands hit the ground before we throw our legs back. However, once you are pretty familiar with the movements in a burpee it will be easy to throw your legs back before your hands hit the ground, and this could save you some time, especially when you are doing multiple burpees.
• Go into an autopilot type of mind frame. Try to keep your mind focused on your form and not on how many more burpees you have to do in your routine. It can seem too challenging when your mind is thinking can I do this many more. It would seem a lot easier if you just focused on the jumping, squatting and maintaining the correct posture. This way it will appear to go by quicker than you thought.
• Remember to breathe. It can be hard to follow the proper breathing techniques when you are exercising. You would not believe how many people tend to hold their breath during their workouts. Try to keep your breathing regular while you are exercising and make sure that you are breathing, especially if you are a fitness newbie or new to a certain exercise routine. You may tend to focus on the movements and posture and not your breathing.
• Follow the correct posture. The burpee is an extremely trying exercise. It is easy to lose the proper posture, especially if you are doing multiple burpees. Be sure that you are not arching your back during the exercise and that you are maintaining the full range of motion required by the exercise. If you have to ease off or slow down to maintain the proper posture then you should. You do not want to waste all your energy on an ineffective fitness routine or even worse injure yourself.

The burpee is a difficult exercise to perform; however, it can give any fitness routine an added boost that it may need to propel you quickly to the results that you want. It may seem like torture to most of us, but there is a good reason for most of us to go through that torture. It helps us reach our fitness goals and makes our bodies stronger and healthier than we thought they could ever be.

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