While many swear by them, most of us see burpees as a form of punishment, usually lined up drill sergeant-style by overzealous bootcamp PTs. Often the final blow in an already brutal workout, burpees are designed to test cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and mental grit. Love them or loathe them, they still deliver every time.
For Max Edwards, aka Busy Dad Training on YouTube, they became a simple but effective way to stay fit and lean during the lockdown. Once a committed powerlifter, spending upwards of 80 minutes a day in the gym, he had to overhaul his training methods due to fatherhood, lockdown, and a schedule that no longer made space for long, periodised lifting sessions.
‘Even though I was putting in hours and hours into the gym and even though my physique was pretty good, I wasn’t becoming truly excellent at any physical discipline,’ he explained in a YouTube video.
‘I loved the intentionality of training,’ says Edwards. ‘The fact that every session has a point, every rep in every set is helping you get towards a training goal, and I love the fact that there was an easy way of gauging progression and feeling like I was beginning to achieve competence, and moving towards mastery.’
However he said he also had a dawning sense that powerlifting could not continue forever. ‘My sessions were very taxing on my central nervous system. I was exhausted between sessions. It felt as if I needed at least nine hours of sleep each night just to be functional’. Edwards also mentioned his appetite was very high.
The most crucial drawback of powerlifting he found was how time consuming it was, ‘I could not justify taking 80 minutes a day away from my family for what felt like a self-centred pursuit,’ says Edwards.
‘Over the course of that year I fixed my relationship with alcohol and I developed for the first time in my adult life a relationship with physical training,’ says Edwards. With limited time and no access to kit, he turned to burpees for his exercise. Just two variations, four times a week, 20 minutes each workout.
‘My approach in each workout was very simple. On a six-count training day I would simply do as many six counts as I possibly could within 20 minutes. On a Navy Seal training day I would simply do as many Navy Seal burpees as I could within 20 minutes, and then in the next workout I would simply try to beat the number that I had managed in the previous one,’ he says. This style of training is called an AMRAP (as many reps or rounds as possible).
Edwards said that none of this was intended as anything more than a six-month stop gap to help him stay in shape, but then recalled catching sight of himself in the mirror one morning: ‘I was utterly baffled by the man I saw looking back at me.’
He found himself in the best shape of his life, but also his energy improved, his resting heart rate dropped, and his physique changed in ways powerlifting couldn’t quite deliver. ‘It has been five years since I have set foot in a gym,’ says Edwards. ‘That six-month training practice has become the defining training practice of my life, and for five years I have trained for no more than 80 minutes per week.’
The Burpee Workouts
1/ 6-Count Burpees
20-minute AMRAP, twice a week
How to do them:
- Start standing, feet shoulder width apart.
- Crouch down and place your hands on the floor (count 1).
- Jump your feet into a high plank (count 2).
- Drop into the bottom of a push-up (count 3).
- Push back up to plank (count 4).
- Jump your feet forward to your hands (count 5).
- Stand up straight (count 6).
2/ Navy Seal Burpees
20-minute AMRAP, twice a week
How to do them:
- Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart.
- Crouch down and place your hands on the floor.
- Jump your feet into a high plank.
- Perform a push-up (chest to floor).
- At the top of the push-up, bring your right knee to your right elbow and return.
- Perform another push-up.
- Bring your left knee to your left elbow and return.
- Perform a third push-up.
- Jump your feet forward.
- Stand or jump to finish.
Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.