Burpees for the Holidays? Yes! Timonium Gym Shows You How

Worried about squeezing your workout in amidst all of the holiday hustle and bustle? Burpees are your new best friend. Because while they may have a silly-sounding name, they’re 100 percent serious when it comes to delivering a surefire way to keep excess pounds at bay during this festive — and food-filled — season.

But all burpees aren’t created equal. In fact, there are many different kinds of burpees — each packed with body-boosting, pulse-pumping benefits. Read on for a roundup of seven burpees to add to your exercise routine this December.

1. Snowflake Burpees

Courtesy of the MacEwan University Sport and Wellness team, this spirited burpee offers a vigorous whole-body workout that targets the arms, chest, core, glutes, quads, and hamstrings. Plus, you get to strike your best snowflake pose in the process.

2. Single-Leg Burpee

While getting the hang of single-leg burpees may take some practice at first, it’s well worth the effort — especially if you’re a runner. Why? Because single-leg burpees are a smart addition to your training regimen. Explains Runner’s World: “Running is a single-leg sport. At any given second, only one foot is on the ground. The same holds true for this next-level burpee variation, helping you develop single-leg strength and endurance.”

3. Candlestick Burpees

What do you get when you combine two major conditioning tools used by athletes everywhere? The candlestick burpee. Bringing together the candlestick roll and the standard burpee, this dynamic exercise is “a calisthenics, cardiovascular, martial arts, plyometrics, and total body exercise that primarily targets the quads and to a lesser degree also targets the abs, chest, forearms, glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors, lower back, middle back, shoulders, and triceps,” according to Exercise.com. 

4. Lateral Burpee Box Jump

While burpees elicit moans of dread from many exercisers, Men’s Health makes the bold claim about the lateral burpee box jump that you’ll actually look forward to doing it. Why? Because not only will it make you feel good, but it will also make you feel like a “straight-up athlete.” And who doesn’t want to feel like that once in awhile? You will need a low box to pull off this move, but other than that all you’ll need is the will.

An added benefit of lateral burpees, according to Men’s Health? They’re “critical to staying agile and being able to move quickly in any direction.” So if you’re planning on hitting the ski slopes this winter, you’ll be ready for all of those tight turns.

5. Burpee with Jump Lunges

How can you make a standard burpee even more powerful? By adding a lunge, of course! Lunges boast an abundance of advantages, including improving balance, promoting functionality, increasing hip flexor flexibility, enhanced glute activation, better core stability, and spinal deloading.

6. Jump Pull-Up Burpee

While this burpee variation is not for beginners, it’s perfect for fitness enthusiasts looking to take their burpees to the next level — literally as well as figuratively, in this case. Not only does it combine “strength and cardio in one simple movement,” according to Stack, but it also challenges the upper body as much as it challenges the lower.

One last thing to keep in mind about burpees of every incarnation is that proper form is essential to both maximizing the benefits of the movements and minimizing your risk of injury with any burpee workout. Sign up for a 7 Day Free Pass