The Burpee: King of All Exercises

There may be no greater single exercise than the burpee.  It is,  perhaps, the only exercise equally adept at preparing you for the  physical challenges of life, as it is at preparing you for the mental and emotional battles you will inevitably face. 

The burpee is a full body, multi-dimensional exercise that is complex in its simplicity.  To do one, you need only to stand in one position,  fall to the ground until you are flat prone.  From there,  jump up to your feet and into the air with hands above your head.  Extend your hips, knees and spine.  Although simple, they are the hardest damn things you may ever do in your life.  Especially when strung together several dozen at a time.

When done correctly, the burpee works nearly all of the muscles in  your body at once - in every rep.  It does so in ways that your body  naturally moves.  This makes the burpee nearly perfect for functional use and  transferability into daily life. 

While taxing most of the major muscle groups it also taxes multiple  energy systems.  This means you gain strength, stamina and  cardiovascular prowess while doing burpees.  When done for the purpose of  optimal health, you also gain max efficiency and effectiveness from  workouts that include them. 

Physical improvement isn't the only thing burpees have to offer.  The  symbolism of performing burpees and overcoming the challenges they  present has never been lost on me.  It is one of the reasons I like them  so much and consistently program them into your workouts.  

Learning to like burpees did not come easily.  It was pounded into me  by one of my HS football coaches.  Coach Barrus loved burpees.  Back then we called them "up-downs."  He made us do thousands of them  and he had a real knack for making them extra painful.  He'd have us doing up-downs  in the sweltering, summer midday sun as readily as in the "nut numbing" cold.  We'd do them in the mud, on gravel, on black top, etc.  Once he  threatened to make us do them over in the sticker weeds next to the  football field just to toughen us up and make us move faster.  The guy  was a master of pure misery and while he was making us pound out burpee  after miserable burpee he'd teach us lessons of life AT FULL VOLUME!   One thing I'll never forget him saying was:

"NOTHING hurts more than this...if you are tough enough to get up  and do more of these, you'll be tough enough to get up and shake it off  when it counts."  

I think coach's words hold more truth today than they did back then.   And so, for this reason plus all the reasons above, I LOVE burpees.  I  believe they are as effective, well-rounded, and meaningful as they are  painful.  Therefore, in MY book, they remain: King of All Exercises.

Dead People Walk

by Neil Anderson

I despise the popluar notion that walking for exercise is all one would need for optimal health, fitness, functionality and disease prevention.  Walking is remedial exercise, at best.  Covert Bailey, in his book, "fit or fat" wrote...

"Dead people walk." 

I'll admit.  The first time I read this, I was offended.  It seemed like a very calloused thing to say.  But, then one day I had an experience that drove his words home to me.

From 1994 - 1999 I worked my way through Utah State's Exercise Science program by working as a physical therapist's aide.  The physical therapy office I worked in was an extension of the tiny rural hospital in Brigham City Utah.  Each day it was our duty to walk down the hall into the hospital and ambulate (walk) patients. 

One of these patients was an elderly woman from my home town.  I knew her well.  She was the head lunch lady of my tiny rural elementary school.  I'm not sure how it was in your school, but in mine the lunch was hand made by local retirees.  Good stuff.  I can remember very few days that we didn't all LOVE the cooking these gals threw down.  Lunch was a special time and OUR lunch ladies weren't only popular with all the kids...Our lunch ladies were elementary school ROCK STARS. 

It was a pleasure for me to catch up with her all those years later and try to serve her as she had served me when I was a kid.  And although it was a pleasure to walk with her every night and morning, it was also very sad.  Her hospital stay was not one with the intention to help her heal and send her home.  My lunch lady friend was dying of cancer and had come to the hospital to pass in relative comfort.

My point is this:  Dead people really CAN walk. 

Early in the morning I walked down the hall from the PT to walk my lunch lady friend.  And walk we did.  I figure conservatively that she covered roughly a half mile.  And although she was really quite sick, we covered that half mile at a fairly brisk pace.  Brisk enough that we were both breathing quite heavily at the end.

You'd think that someone who was in good enough shape to cover a half mile of brisk walking several times per day, would be someone who was getting some pretty good exercise and was in pretty good shape. 

NOT SO. 

A couple hours after one of our walks (I'm talking one or two) I snuck down into her room to retrieve a belt that I had been using to help stabilize her only to discover that she had passed. 

It was in this moment that I understood exactly what Covert Bailey was talking about. 

Dead people DO walk.  My lunch lady friend was on deaths door and here the two of us were briskly walking the halls of the hospital only moments before she had passed.  This begged some research. 

Upon further investigation, I learned that human locomotion, especially walking, is one of the most efficient gait patterns in the entire animal kingdom.  In reality, it takes very LITTLE energy for us to get around.  When we are upright we are literally stacking piles of bones together (think, "shin bones' connected to the thigh bone...") while placing one foot in front of the other to move forward.  Most of the energy it takes for humans to walk comes more from balancing these stacks of bones than it does from muscular locomotion. The energy spent doing this is comparatively little compared to the energy it takes to lift, push, pull, carry, throw or jump.  So little, in fact, as to render WALKING fairly USELESS in terms of exercise.  

Therefore, I am against it - with rare exception.