3 Simple Steps to Mastering the Burpee – CrossFit Classes in Cherry Hill

Who could imagine that there is more to the burpee than just getting yourself down to the ground and getting yourself back up? In a nutshell, that’s exactly what a burpee is, but we can break down the movement into simple mechanics to help us better understand and become more efficient. Check out these 3 simple steps to mastering the burpee that will also help to avoid positional breakdown when we are doing hundreds in a row.

#1 – FEET TOGETHER, HANDS TO YOUR SIDE, TOUCH THE FLOOR

Think as if someone took an imaginary rope and tied your feet together. Now place your hands at your side and bend at the waist, reaching your hands to the floor. By keeping your feet together, we naturally push our knees out as we bend and achieve a good position instead of allowing our knees to dive in. Notice, toes and heels are down as well, achieving a foot that is glued to the ground.

#2 – SNAKE YOUR BODY BACK UP

After achieving step #1 above, we need to kick our feet back and drop ourselves flat to the ground. Easy right? The difficult part is pressing ourselves back up. Do not make this a strict push-up-like movement. Instead, allow your chest to roll up and extend at the hips, snaking your body off the floor. Be sure to stay tight in the posterior, squeezing your back and glutes as your rise.

#3 – SNAP! YOUR FEET IN

By completing #2, we are peak loaded and can now snap our feet up by our hands. This returns our hips into flexion and puts us in a very similar (if not exact) position to where we began. This snapping motion happens to be the same thing we see on kipping pull-ups, muscle-ups, and even rope climb.

Burpees suck. There’s no way around it, but if we can become more efficient at the movement they will be that much easier to complete during your next WOD. Following these steps will not only improve your burpee game, but as mentioned, this skill transfers directly to several of our other CrossFit movements. Hate burpees no more!