Burpee Workout Notes: Scaling Effort

I completed more than 3000 burpees in 30 days and I am in love with my burpee workout. Normally, I would stop working out especially the days I am sore, tired, or just not in the “mood” for working out.

A thing I discovered after 3000 burpees: I can scale the effort up or down based on the type of burpee.

For those days (or even sets!) where I do not want to work out so hard, yet - I still want to work out, I take a different approach to the burpee to scale the effort down or up.

Full Burpee

The full effort burpee would have these actions:

• plank
• pushup
• legs thrust in
• squat
• jump

These are also known as “Cross Fit” burpee.

Basic Burpee

The most basic burpee would be:

• plank
• legs walk in
• squat

The amount of effort for 10 of these burpees are less - but it keeps you moving (instead of just sitting around breathing).

Lower Energy

You can add/reduce elements as you wish. This is my lower energy version:

• plank
• pushup
• legs thrust OR walk in
• squat

That jump just makes the workout hard enough that I notice a difference when I omit the jump.

Dynamic Effort

As much as I want to do full burpees - I know my limits and I push them by even just completing the rest of the workout.

When I hit those limits during the workout, I change up the burpee type I do, right in the middle of the workout.

Finish Strong

No matter what, I do a full effort burpee for my last set of 10 burpees in my work out, no matter how tired I started.

Final Words

I love that I can adjust the amount of effort I put into burpees to make the burpee work for me in almost any condition. This helps me achieve the bigger goal of getting a solid workout every day and I can avoid hurting myself.

Do you have a workout that is adjustable? How have you adjusted the workout to meet your needs?

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