Everything About Burpees in CrossFit + 31 Workouts with Burpees

30 Mar 2019

Open 2019 is now over, and I got used to writing articles every week.

I was thinking about starting a new series that would deeply analyze the most popular CrossFit movements.

I would love to show you how to pace each movement, how to do each movement most efficiently, how to build a strategy around that movement in different WODs and give you a few tips and tricks that I have learned in over almost 10 years of CrossFit.

I decided to start with burpees as they are my favorite and are a staple of CrossFit WODs (Workout Of the Day).

What are Burpees?

Burpees are bodyweight exercise with a simple goal.

1. Lay on your chest
2. Stand up and jump

What you do in between those positions it is up to you.

The most natural way how to perform burpees is:

1. Start at the standing position
2. Lean forward
3. Kick your feet back and through semi-controlled push-up fall to ground and touch the ground with chest
4. Push yourself away from the ground while jumping forward
5. Stand up, jump and connect your hands over or behind your head

Looks easy right?

The good thing about burpees is that everyone can do them as the goal is just to lay down and get back up.

Burpees scale well with increasing performance and they are still challenging even for top tier athletes because no matter how good you are you can still do them faster.

There are multiple kinds of burpee variations to name a few you have probably heard about target burpees, bar facing burpees or burpee box jumps. This article will be focused only to classic burpees as writing about all variants will make this article 10k words long.

My experience with Burpees

1. You need to do about 18 burpees per minute during 10-20 minute WOD to beat 95% athletes
2. Everyone hates me whenever I write 100 burpees for time on the whiteboard
3. I have done my first 100 burpees in ~13 minutes in 2012
4. I have finished my last 100 burpees in 4:48 in 2018
5. The most burpees I have done was 500 burpees for a time in 35:40

The most common mistakes with burpees that slow you down

Burpees are simple movement but have you ever tried to analyze the movement?

There are multiple small mistakes that slow you down on burpees.

1) Squatting down instead of jumping back

This is one of the most common mistakes that I have seen beginners do.

What people do is that they squat to the bottom position and then kick their legs back. That extra squat takes away a lot of energy and makes each burpee a little longer.

To avoid that just lean forward from standing position (instead of squatting) and fall down or step back to the bottom of a push-up.

2) Squatting up instead of standing up

This issue goes hand in hand with the first issue. This time the extra squat happens on the way back up.

If you combine it with the first issue, you are doing two unnecessary squats that slow you down a lot and make burpees much harder.

The easy fix is to step up or jump up from the burpee to quarter squat.

3) Doing a strict push-up instead of controlled fall

This is a less common issue than the previous two, but I still see it happen from time to time.

Athletes drop from burpee to plank position and then perform a strict push-up. The problem is that it takes away a lot of push energy and slows the movement as you stop the momentum.

The solution is to continue your push-up and not stop in a plank position. Your goal should be controlled fall to the bottom position of a push-up.

4) Starting burpees too quickly

I can’t even count how often I see athletes to just sprint with first 10 burpees and then gasp for breath during another 90% of a WOD.

Sprinting in burpees give your body huge feedback in elevated heart rate, and unless WOD ends in following 2 minutes, it is not worth doing burpees quickly.

Always adjust your burpees pace to remaining time in the WOD and to following movements.

5) Resting too much before starting

Burpees are a simple exercise, and no matter how tired you are, you can always continue.

I know it is not easy, especially if you have just finished a set of 20 thrusters but if you want to get a better score, you have to keep moving.

6) Clapping with hands overhead

Most of the time rules for burpees is to connect your hands over or behind your head.

The worst variant of this I have seen was a guy who was doing 100 burpees for the time. He always forgot to jump after every burpee, but he didn’t forget to stand up and with straight arms clap as loudly as he could.

It was funny to watch, but as we talk about performance, he could’ve been done at least 50% faster if he just connected his arms behind his head.

7) Jumping too high

If there are no extra rules (e.g., target burpees), then there is no reason to jump higher than an inch above the ground.

Do an as small jump as possible, especially, if you feel fresh to save as much energy as you can.

How to perform burpees efficiently?

You should be able to get at least ~20% better score if you avoid all the mistakes that I have mentioned before.

1) Fall down, jump up

As I already said, doing two extra squats during each burpee will highly tax your overall performance.

Your goal should be to just lean forward with almost straight legs, kick legs back and do controlled fall to the bottom push up position.

On the way up, you should jump up or step up to a position where you are still leaning forward, but your legs are almost fully extended.

2) Jump up to a wide stance

Try to jump from a burpee to a slightly wider stance than your shoulder width.

With a wider stance, you can have a slightly shorter jump which requires little less energy and speeds up your burpees.

By the way, sometimes movement rules require to finish burpee with feet at a width that is equal or lower to shoulder width. In this case, it still worth jumping up to wide stance but don’t forget to move your feet together after each rep.

3) Bump your chest against the ground

Use the momentum of your body when going down to bounce from the ground.

This will become harder as you get more tired but try to avoid stopping a burpee in the bottom position at all cost.

4) Choose the correct pace

Do your burpees at the same speed through a full workout. The only time when you should sprint is when you are finishing the last minute of the WOD.

More on pacing later in the WOD examples chapter.

5) Start immediately when you finish the previous exercise

Burpees don’t require much focus (like heavy snatches), you can do burpees anywhere, and you don’t need any equipment for them.

Starting burpees right when you finish the previous exercise can save you a few extra seconds.

Usually, it is faster to start immediately with a few slow burpees than taking a break between movements and going a little faster.

6) Scale to step-up and/or step-down if you are too tired

As I already said, to get a better time at burpees, you have to keep moving.

No matter how tired you are, you can still step-down to a burpee and step-up from a burpee.

Usually, I switch to step-up when I do burpees together with some very taxing exercise like thrusters, wall balls or calories on Assault Bike.

I even switch to step-up + step-down if WOD is too long, for example in the middle of 40 min AMRAP.

Check all tips and tricks on video:

Strategy guides for 31 WODs with Burpees

To make things more clear I would like to show you strategy for Burpees in multiple different WODs including a wide variety of time domains and movement combinations.

I will also add a good time to beat. If you can beat that time, you should be able to beat 95% athletes that have done this WOD and following burpees strategy should be able to help you achieve that.

Short WODs (< 5 minutes) with simple movements

All these WODs are short sprints of burpees paired with movements where you can just keep moving as you don’t need to focus before starting them.

The goal of these WODs is to learn to push the pace when your heart rate is highly elevated and keep moving quickly under fatigue.

You should go very fast if you know the WOD is short and you don’t need to focus on the following movement (like heavy snatch).

The pace should be about 4 burpees faster (~22 burpees per minute) compared to longer WODs (+12 min), and you should sprint during the last minute of the WOD.

Short WODs (< 5 minutes) – a difference between starting and finishing with burpees

I want to show you a difference between starting WOD with burpees and finishing with WOD burpees.

The first WOD starts with the burpees. The WOD is short but being tired on wall balls doesn’t help. You should do burpees at a medium pace and push hard on wall balls.

The second WOD has burpees in the middle. You could do them a little faster than in the first WOD, but it all depends on how hard can you push on wall balls. You don’t need to speed up on burpees if you can do last 30 wall balls unbroken.

The last WOD ends with burpees. A good time for this WOD should be about the same or slightly faster than for the first WOD. I wouldn’t do the wall balls unbroken, probably 20+10+10 or even smaller sets with super quick rest. The trick behind a better time is to increase the pace of burpees every 10 reps. The first 10 will be slow as you go down immediately when the med ball touches the ground, the second 10 are at your usual pace, you speed up for the third 10, and you sprint during last 10 reps.

Short WODs (< 5 minutes) with difficult movements

In this category, you will find a few movements that require high skill, a lot of focus and are hard to perform under fatigue.

The goal of these WODs is to learn how to perform difficult movements under fatigue.

All WODs are relatively short, but you shouldn’t sprint. You will need to rest more if you do burpees too quickly.

Your goal should be to do burpees at a reasonable pace, take a longer break before first rep on a difficult movement and try to keep rest short between other reps.

You should start burpees immediately after the last rep of the other movement.

Medium WODs (7-12 minutes) with classic movements

I love 7-12 minute time domain. WODs are short enough to be done with higher intensity and yet the finish line is nowhere near when they start to hurt.

What it means for burpees is that you have to keep moving. You can switch to step-up/step-down if you need to, but you should aim for at least 18 burpees per minute.

Make sure to don’t rush on burpees in the first 3 minutes of WOD.

Medium (7-12 minute) WODs with only push modality

What makes these WODs hard is that all movements are push movements. Fatigue in shoulders and pecs will hit hard during these WODs, and you have to strategize a lot to get fast through these WODs.

To beat the good time you should start with small sets with quick rest on all push movements and go slowly on burpees.

It is hard to do controlled fall when you have fatigued shoulders. It is better to do step-down/step-up burpees since the beginning.

Long WODs (15-25 minutes)

All WODs in long WODs category are just pure grind. They hurt a lot, and you have to keep going if you want to finish them with good time or score.

But it is hard to keep pushing hard for full ~20 minutes. That’s why you should aim for a slower pace while minimizing rest time and heart rate peaks.

During long WODs I usually start the first 5 minutes of WOD with classic jumped burpees and then switch to step down to keep myself going while maintaining a decent pace of at least 16-18 burpees per minute.

I would also recommend starting burpees immediately after the previous movement and keep moving slowly. Use your rest only before difficult movements.

Very Long WODs (+30 minutes)

Don’t take these WODs too seriously. They shouldn’t be part of your daily routine. It is worth to do them only once or twice per month but not more.

This is the only type of WODs where you should slow down as it is almost impossible to keep going at a decent pace for +30 minutes.

I don’t think about slacking if I say to slow down, I think you can take a little extra time between movements and try to make your movements as efficient as they can be. All that extra energy from moving inefficiently will sum up during that +30 minutes.

In such long workouts, I usually take burpees as an exercise with window to recover where I slow on them a lot to about 10 per minute which allows me to push little harder on other movements.

This is no brainer! Go all out, fall down, bounce from the ground, small jump, repeat.

You can’t go as fast as in 1-minute AMRAP, but you should still keep going quickly. There is no time for rest. You should aim for +25 burpees per minute.

It may take several tries to find the correct pace that you can sustain for 2 minutes, but this WOD is easily repeatable as it is very short.

This is one of the most popular burpees WODs. Your first 100 will probably take over 10:00, but I believe that almost anyone can work hard to get 100 in 7:00 or faster.

On the other hand time of 5:30 is hard to get, and you should be able to beat 95% athletes with such time. That’s the pace of 18.18 burpees per minute.

You have to beat good at burpees and know your pace.

I love to compare 100 burpees to 1-mile run. You can’t start with a sprint, but you have to hold an uncomfortable pace for over 5 minutes, and you can’t stop.

Pro tip, I hate large rep numbers, I always try to count small sets in my head. For example sets of 5 …, 15, 1, 2, 3, 4, 20, 1, 2, 3, 4, 25, 1, 2,…

I find this test easier than 100 burpees for a time even though the pace for good time is just slightly slower.

The WOD is still uncomfortable as it is many reps of just burpees, but I tend to choose a slightly more comfortable pace on burpees compared to 100 burpees for time.

170 burpees in over 10 minutes are definitely doable but take a lot of dedication to not stop. You should still jump your burpees, and you won’t be probably able to beat good time if you decide to step up/down.

300 is a lot! But it still fits relatively short time domain where you can keep a decent pace.

You should be able to achieve time to beat even with stepping up/down.

Just turn off your mind for another 21 minutes and keep going, don’t stop.

I did this WOD only once when I was bored at home, and I wanted to do long WOD.

My final time was 35:40 and it was actually pretty easy even though it looks like one of the worst WODs ever.

500 burpees for a time were all about turning off your mind and just keep griding.

I was stepping down and jumping up all burpees and kept going without rest for all 500 reps.

No, thank you!

Why would anyone do more than 100 burpees in a row?

Just kidding, give it a try if you love burpees. This one will definitelly improve your mental toughness.

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