Burpees are a fantastic body weight exercise that shed fat, burn calories, and even help you build muscle. They require no equipment, either, making the exercise a great choice for home workouts, hotel workouts, or training with limited fitness equipment.
Here’s how many calories burpees burn, plus some tips to lose weight adding burpees to your workouts.
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How Many Calories Do Burpees Burn?
Burpees burn between 8 and 12 calories per minute, although the calories burned depends on your pace. The average person in moderate-to-good shape should be able to perform between 10 and 20 burpees per minute. That’s a pace of one burpee every 3 to 5 seconds.
30 minutes of burpees, at least theoretically, could burn up to 420 calories, all while building muscle mass and developing your upper and lower body strength. (Dang!) That’s killer, especially considering a full body workout like swimming only burns about 250 calories in 30 minutes.
However, even incredibly fit people can’t do this calisthenic exercise for thirty straight minutes. Performing burpees as part of a full body workout is a great way to burn calories and fat while building strength and working on other skills, too. But knowing how many calories exactly may be hard to calculate until you figure out how many you can do for 60 seconds—and maintain that pace over a workout.
Benefits of Burpees
The benefits of burpees include:
- Entire body exercise that sheds body fat/ improves body composition.
- High number of calories burned per minute.
- Improved body coordination and balance.
- Improved cardiovascular health, and all the benefits (like lower blood pressure) that come with that.
- Improved performance in planks, push-ups, and other exercises.
- Intense exercise with no equipment needed.
- Easy exercise to modify and make low impact if you have bad joints.
- Great workout for circuit training, intervals, and other forms of exercise routines.
How Do You Do Burpees?
To perform burpees:
- Start in a standing position, with feet shoulder width apart and arms shoulder width apart.
- Lower into a squat position, then place your hands flat on the ground.
- Kick your feet back to the top of a push-up position; do a push-up, if you can.
- Jump your feet forward to your hands, then extend your hips to stand fully.
- Clap your hands overhead, then repeat!
How to Modify Burpees for Weight Loss
For some, burpees may be too difficult or limitations like knee pain may make it hard to get the calorie burning going with a burpee based high-intensity workout. The good news is, burpees can be a vigorous calisthenics exercise even if you need to modify the exercise.
Tips for Modifying Burpees
Here are some tips to maintain proper form when you’re first learning burpees:
- Step back instead of jumping when you drop to the floor in a squat position.
- Pause in the plank position instead of doing a push-up if upper body strength training isn’t an option yet.
- Avoid jumping and clapping at the top; just stand up fully and reach your hands overhead.
Any burpee exercise routine can be done with just minimal floor space. Make sure you have enough space to jump your feet back and that the ground beneath won’t skin your knees when you jump back.
How Many Burpees Should You Do To Lose Weight?
For those wondering how many burpees you need to do to lose weight, it’s a tough question to answer that isn’t one size fits all. If your fitness levels are low or you’re a beginner that hasn’t done high intensity exercises before, doing even 10 to 20 burpees per day could be a great place to start.
That said, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only choose one exercise, burpees would be a great choice. As a standalone movement, they can aid in losing weight, building muscle mass, adding strength, and building full body coordination and balance.
How Many Burpees For a Beginner?
Start with a number that’s challenging but doable for you. To lose weight, you’ll also want to adjust how much food you’re eating to help promote weight loss. Your fitness routine plus your diet go hand in hand.
Adding Burpees To Your Fitness Routine
To incorporate burpees into your fitness routine and burn calories, you need to first decide what your fitness goals look like. It could be as simple as performing burpees during a warmup each day, or building them into a vigorous calisthenics routine that elevates your heart rate and improves strength.
Burning extra calories is possible when you combine exercises with burpees. You’ll get maximum benefits from your workout by keeping your heart rate high and doing more work in the same amount of time. (Some ideas for burpee weight loss workouts are listed below.)
What Other Body weight Exercises are Good With Burpees?
If you have a pull up bar, access to a track or place to run, and some floor space, you can get a killer workout by mixing in other bodyweight exercises.
Here are some great body weight exercises to keep you burning calories:
- Pull-ups
- Squats
- Squat thrusts
- Mountain climbers
- Jumping jacks
- Swimming
- Running
These movements are all great because they don’t use the same muscles you need for upper body “push” strength training exercises. The push-up section of a burpee is usually the limiting factor for most people, so you can pare them together without fatiguing muscles too quickly.
Burpee Workout Routine To Shed Fat
Learn how to use burpees and some movements listed above to burn more calories below. The number of calories burned in a workout should improve over time as your fitness increases.
Tabata Burpees
Running short on time? Try a simple 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off (8 rounds) Tabata-style workout using burpees.
Is four minutes enough time to burn calories and lose weight? Studies show that high intensity exercises like burpees have a positive effect on burning calories after you finish working out, too. So yes, even a four minute workout can help with weight loss.
100 Day Burpee Challenge
A simple way to burn fat and burn more calories every day is to do the 100 day burpee challenge. It’s a simple challenge even beginners can tackle—do the same number of burpees for each day of the challenge. Day one is one burpee, day thirty five is 35 burpees, etc.
In total, you’ll do 5,050 burpees over the next 100 days. The harder you work during the longer sets, the more calories you’ll burn.
Burpee Variations Workout
Set a goal of doing X number of burpees. Let’s say you’re going to do 50 total burpees.
Now, use different burpee variations and switch them every 5 to 10 repetitions.
Some fun burpee variations include:
- High jump burpees (12 feet or higher, touching a pull up bar above if possible)
- Burpee broad jumps
- Wide push-up burpees
- Burpee pull ups
- Burpee jumping lunges
- Burpee box jump overs
Burpee Jumpovers Workout
If you’re trying to build muscle mass, use a barbell to do a couplet workout (two movements, for time). Here’s a tough burpee jump over workout the average person can do for weight loss.
10 rounds (for time):
- 7 Barbell thrusters (75lbs)
- 7 Burpee barbell jump overs
You can jump over the bar laterally to save time and get a better score, or turn and face it if you’re feeling uncertain about the lateral jump. Both will burn lots of calories. If you’re just getting started, do this workout with an empty barbell.
