Updated by Tom Miller, CSCS
The burpee exercise is nearly 100 years old, as it was invented in 1939. Despite the funny name, burpees are easy to learn but hard to do for several minutes before getting burned out.
Depending on your weight and body composition, you’ll burn about 11.1 calories for each minute you do burpees, which equates to 666 calories per hour. If you perform 15 burpees each minute, you can expect to burn about 0.74 calories for each burpee you do.
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These instructions will get you started with the basic form of how to do burpees correctly. If you’re looking for more in-depth tips and pointers on how to do burpees most effectively, check out our guide that explains burpees with more advanced information.
Burpees are a popular exercise among casual gymgoers and CrossFit pros alike. In fact, there are plenty of benefits that come with doing burpees regularly as part of your exercise routine. If you’re thinking of starting to incorporate burpees, here are the benefits you’ll experience.
Burpees are one of the best exercises if you’re looking to burn plenty of calories to get a ripped physique. The only way to lose body fat is to stay in a caloric deficit, and adding burpees to your workout will burn plenty of calories to help you stay in a deficit.
You can also choose the intensity that you do burpees, as a higher intensity without many breaks will elevate your heart rate and allow you to burn more calories.
Burpees are so effective because they use your body weight as resistance, which also means you don’t need any specific additional equipment if you want to get started with burpees.
This exercise is also great because it conditions your entire body while working nearly every muscle group. Whether you’re an athlete training for your sport or just want to condition your body to look good, burpees are extremely effective.
If you want to try some burpee variations to make the exercise more difficult, you may want to use some additional equipment to add resistance.
Another great thing about burpees is that you can modify the exercise to suit your level of fitness and you can gradually increase the intensity as you become more comfortable with the exercise.
We will discuss some variations that you can do with burpees to make them easier or harder depending on your ideal intensity level.
You may not think that burpees work your core very much since your legs are the primary muscle group that is targeted, but burpees can be a great exercise if you’re looking to build a rock-solid core.
Improving your core strength can increase your balance, flexibility, and reduce the risk of injuries. It can also improve your posture so you appear more confident throughout your daily life.
Our burpees calculator uses a MET value to give you an accurate estimate of how many calories you can expect to burn while doing burpees and other similar exercises. The higher the MET value, the more calories you will burn from doing the exercise.
A MET value is the metabolic equivalent of task, and these values allow us to give you an estimated expenditure of energy for many different activities, such as doing burpees.
A MET value shows the difference between the working metabolic rate and the resting metabolic rate [1], which is the rate of energy that is used compared to the duration of time spent doing activities such as burpees.
This means that a MET value of 1 is the equivalent of the amount of energy you expend while at rest, and a MET value of 8 means you are expending 8 times as much energy compared to being at rest.
Pretty much all activities you can think of have MET values assigned to them. Some common activities with MET values assigned to them are skating, playing football, and meditating.
Most activities come with varying levels of intensity and have different MET values assigned to them. However, burpees have a single MET value of 8, which means burpees are a very intense exercise that you can burn plenty of calories while doing.
The formula that our burpees calculator uses to determine the number of calories burned per minute takes your body weight multiplied by the MET value times 3.5 divided by 200.
This gives you the number of calories you’ll burn per minute. Then you must multiply that number by 60 to get the number of calories you’ll burn in one hour of doing burpees.
A person weighing 175 pounds will burn approximately 666 calories per hour from doing burpees with no breaks. Burpee has a MET of 8, which means that it burns about 8 times as many calories compared to being at rest.
This is what the formula for calculating the calories burned while doing burpees will look like for a 175-pound individual at a MET value of 8.
If you’re looking to take your workout to the next level or just want a challenge, you’ll need to incorporate variations of the traditional burpee.
To perform the star jump burpee, you’ll do almost exactly the same form as a regular burpee, however instead of jumping straight up, you’ll generate enough power to jump into the air in a star formation.
This means you’ll jump up with your arms and legs spread away from your body as you’re in the air. Once you come down, you’ll bring your arms and legs back in to perform the next repetition.
The side burpee is another variation of the burpee that is more challenging than the standard burpee. The side burpee is just like the normal burpee however instead of jumping with your feet directly behind you, you’ll shoot them out diagonally to the left.
Then you come up and jump as normal and then the next rep you’ll go to the right, alternating each time. You should feel your obliques engaged when doing the side burpee.
The box burpee is perhaps the hardest variation of burpees that you can try. Instead of simply jumping in the air as you do with a regular burpee, you find a box or an elevated surface to jump onto.
You’ll definitely feel this added resistance in your lower body like your quads and hamstrings, and you’ll probably find you can only do a couple of dozen of these burpees before you’re exhausted.
Try out our other calorie-based calculators below.
Burpees are an intense exercise that takes some practice to master. Once you have the correct form down, you’ll notice that you will reap many of the benefits we’ve discussed, such as a stronger core and accelerated fat loss.
If you really want to see results from doing burpees, consider trying out some of the variations we mentioned to challenge yourself in the gym and burn some extra calories.
Use our burpee calculator to get an idea of how many calories you can expect to burn while doing burpees, and be sure to check out all the other calculators that we have to offer at Fitness Volt!
Scott is 25 years old and resides in Philadelphia, PA. Scott has a passion for health and fitness and lives an active lifestyle. He enjoys hiking, skiing, traveling, and playing basketball with friends as well as working out at the gym. Scott is a graduate of Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ where he was an Entrepreneurship major, scholarship recipient, and honor society member. Scott is also the founder of Interphase Marketing, LLC where he creates content for health and fitness companies as well as for the financial services industry.
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