Best Burpee Workouts For Cardio & Conditioning
Burpees can be your best friend or worst enemy. Burpees can be a fantastic conditioning tool that you use to get in shape faster or they can be a brutal end to your workout. Either way you look at it, burpees play an integral role in your conditioning for crossfit, athletic performance or to just look good naked.
Burpees often appear to pop up in your training program where you least expect it. As such a versatile move, all you need is some space and body weight, they can be paired with any movement that you want. I personally favor the classic type of burpee over newer versions with a weight vest. If you want some workouts with a weight vest here you go.
You can have burpee only workouts on days where you are pressed for time or you can choose to add burpees into your weight sessions (my preference) as a way to improve your conditioning. Here’s the 8 best burpee workouts to improve your conditioning.
Burpee EMOM
Set the timer on your phone for 12 minutes.
Your minimum goal is to complete 8 burpees per 1 minute round. If you complete all 8 burpees before the minute is up, use that remaining time as rest. As you get fitter, increase the amount of burpees you perform. This workout will go great after any of our crossfit upper body workouts.
Jogging and Burpee
Ideally you can perform this workout anywhere. Start your half of mile jog with 10 burpees. Your jogging pace can be as slow as possible but every half mile you need to stop and perform 10 burpees. At the beginning you can start with a half mile but aim to perform at last a mile run and 20 burpees for ideal conditioning. This type of workout pairs ideally with our crossfit running workouts to make you faster and stronger.
100 burpees for time
I love this burpee cardio workout to improve my overall endurance, especially after a difficult upper body day. Just set your timer and get to work. How fast can you do 100 burpees? Personally I go as hard as possible on my first set and try to get at least 15 reps done before I stop.
Leg Day Burpees
The best way to improve the strength endurance of your lower body is to program burpees in before heavy leg exercises. Here’s how that would look.
Let’s say you’re doing heavy deadlifts. Perform 8 burpees before your set. Then complete your set as normal. Burpees can add up quickly so make sure you monitor your fatigue levels and follow our sore leg recovery guide.
Jump squat burpee workouts
Set your timer for 15 minutes.
Perform 1 minute of max burpees.
Rest for 30 seconds
Perform max reps for bodyweight squats for 1 minute.
Rest 15 seconds
Perform max reps of jump squats for 30 seconds.
Repeat until the time is up
Burpees and Thrustuers.
All you need here is a pair of dumbbells or kettlebells.
5 burpees
5 thrusters
That’s it. 10 sets and your lower body conditioning will be greatly improved. Crossfit is very much a measure of how well you can perform in a fatigued stated. Burpees and thrusters is ideally done at the end of a workout or as a second, assistance workout. I would not pair this before a heavy deadlift or squat day but using burpees for conditioning can be insanely helpful.
Burpee and Wall Balls.
Ideally this is done as a partner workout but you can also perform this alone.
Set your timer for 10 minutes.
1 wall ball, 1 burpees
2 wall balls, 2 burpees
3 wall balls, 3 burpees
You keep adding 1 until the timer is up. There is no rest. When done with a partner you would alternate between wall balls and burpees.
Burpee and Pull ups
This burpee workout is deadly for conditioning and was in the 2019 Crossfit games “chaos” workout”. Start under a rig or pull up bar and perform a burpee touching the bar. There are so many ways you can improve your conditioning with this workout. You can do a set number of burpees for time before you attempt pull ups. You can perform 1 burpee and 1 pull up. The options are endless here.
I wanted to give you 8 creative and different types of burpee workouts here but ultimately the burpee is an insanely adaptable exercise that can be structured and placed into every workout. Make it a point to add burpees into your training today.