Burpees are the ultimate cardio-strength hybrid exercise, but you probably already know that.
What you might want to know is how to fast-track your progress, do burpees more efficiently, and what different variations you can incorporate into your next CrossFit workout.
In this article, I’ll break down eight different burpee styles that you can try for yourself.
These include:
- The standard burpee
- Step down step up burpees
- The splat burpee
- Burpee to a target
- Burpee over the bar
- Bar-facing burpees
- Lateral burpee over the box
- Burpee into gymnastics
The standard burpee
Before we get into the more complex variations, let’s start with the easiest version of the burpee: the standard burpee.
This is where you go down, touch your chest and thighs to the ground, and then jump up and clap above your head.
You can get up off the ground any way you want. However, the key to finishing the burpee is that you need to get a full hip extension by jumping in the air and actually leaving the ground and touching your hands above your head.
Rinse and repeat, and there you have the standard burpee.
Step down step up burpee
The step up step down burpee is just a modification of the standard burpee.
This is a good one to try if you’re a complete beginner or even if you’re super fit if you’re doing a workout with a crazy amount of volume.
To do it, put your hands on the ground, step one leg back at a time, lay on the ground, then push up, bring one leg forward at a time, stand up, and finish with a jump and clap.
For this move, you also have the option of jumping down and then stepping up with one leg at a time as you come back up.
The splat burpee
Another modification of the standard burpee is the splat burpee, also known as the sprint burpee. This is a good option if you want to get your burpees done really fast.
To do it, you splat down onto the group and then bounce up immediately by explosively pushing off with your chest and hips.
However, just like sprinting, you can only do this for so long before you have to slow down.
Burpee to a target
So what can we do to turn that up a notch and make the standard even harder?
Something I’ve seen in a lot of CrossFit competitions, including the CrossFit open, is doing burpees to a target. This is a great way to add a little bit of extra stimulus to your workout.
To do it, start out as you would with a standard burpee, but when you jump up, instead of clapping, you physically touch your hands to a target above your head.
A classic example of this would be jumping up to touch a pull-up bar. The normal standard for this is around a six to ten-inch jump, but you can obviously make it as high as you want.
As well as making sure you’re jumping high enough each time, there’s also an element of aiming and making sure you’re staying balanced and controlled as you jump up towards the bar.
Burpee over the bar
Next up, let’s talk about burpees over the bar. This is another standard variation that’s been made famous over the last few CrossFit opens.
To do an over-the-bar burpee, you’ll need a bar that’s elevated off the ground by some weights.
For each rep, follow the standards of chest and thighs to deck parallel to the bar. When you come up, instead of simply jumping upwards, jump to the side over the bar.
Normally, the rule is to jump with both feet unless you’re scaling the movement, and only when you land on the opposite side of the bar is the rep complete.
For this particular style of burpee, there is no hip extension rule, you don’t have to stand up, and you don’t have to jump and clap, so you can stay super low if you want to get through your set really fast.
Bar-facing burpee
What you can do to make the burpee over the bar even harder is to tape a line that’s perpendicular to the bar and do bar-facing burpees.
So, with your face perpendicular to the bar, hit your chest and thighs to the ground, get up and jump over the bar, then turn to face the bar again and repeat.
This is a much harder standard of the burpee because when you’re facing the bar, you need to move your body a lot farther with each rep, and you’ll find that it gets you out of breath a lot faster.
The trick with this variation is to find that rhythm and cadence and stick to it.
Lateral burpee over the box
Want to make your burpees even more challenging? Look no further than burpees over a box.
This is similar to the burpee over the bar, but you’re taking it up a notch with a much bigger obstacle.
To do this variation, start either laterally to the box or facing it (it’s up to you, but doing it laterally is the easier version), and when you come up, jump over it whichever way suits you best.
To speed things up, you can turn while you’re on the box so you can face the box ready for the next burpee.
However, I’d caution you if you do decide to implement a box. Be careful because it’s really easy to slip up and hit the corner. I’ve even had some friends who’ve smashed their pinky and who needed to get surgery to repair it.
So just be careful, as the box makes things a lot more dangerous. It’s already hard enough to jump on as It is.
Plus, if you want to add some additional torture to your burpees, you could even throw some dumbells into the mix.
Burpee into gymnastics
The final style of burpee that I want to talk about is burpees with gymnastics. You don’t really see these as much, but I love doing them, and you’ll find that they are a great way to challenge yourself.
These are your burpee pull-ups, muscle-ups, toes to bar, strict pull-ups, and so on. Any movement works; you just need to throw a burpee in between each rep.
To do them, follow the same standards of touching your chest and thighs to the ground, then get up and jump into your gymnastics movement.
For burpee pull-ups, you start off with the chest-to-floor standard and then use the jump to start your pull-up, so you’re jumping into that first rep.
If you were doing a kipping movement, like burpee bar muscle ups or burpee ring muscle ups, you would need to jump up from your burpee into that kip and then go into your rep.
So adding a gymnastics movement to the burpee makes it a great variation if you’re looking to mix cardio with strength-building gymnastics.
To Summarize
And there you have your eight variations of the classic burpee! They go in order from easiest to most challenging, so if you’re new to CrossFit®, make sure you master the basics before you incorporate moves like the burpee over a box and gymnastics into your workout.