I would like to start off by saying I have great respect for Mike Boyle and Ben Bruno. They have influenced the way I think about training and I largely agree with their thought processes around many topics. This especially includes the risks outweighing the rewards of bilateral back squatting and shifting the focus to single-leg training for athletes. With that said, I state my case for why burpees should not be considered dumb and may even have a place in the training process.
Mike Boyle has made the argument that a burpee broken down into its parts becomes a jump, a push-up, and a cardiovascular challenge. He goes on to say that rather than combine them, each one is better off trained alone:
If you’re doing it because you want the lower-body plyometric challenge from jumping back up at the end, then just do plyometric exercises like squat jumps. If you’re doing it for the upper-body challenge of the pushup, just do pushups! If you’re doing it for the cardiovascular challenge, there are a million interval-training protocols a trainer can give you that can make you just as tired. - Mike Boyle
Coach Boyle seems to be arguing for quality in exercise selection. I agree to a certain extent that if you want to get the most out of a jump or a push-up, just focus on jumps and push-ups. If you want to get a cardiovascular benefit without causing shoulder injuries or low back pain, there are probably better options than high rep burpees. So yes, high repetition burpees are probably not very smart. But then I must ask when are the number of burpee repetitions suddenly high? Is it more than 5, 10, 20, 100? Like any other exercise, the reps and sets prescribed should be progressed in a logical way. Too much of anything for the wrong person will cause distress and injury, but the right dosage will lead to increased robustness.
What about developing overall movement quality? The burpee may not be ideal from an exercise standpoint, but it offers a lot as a movement. The fact that it combines many elements makes it more complex. Complexity, as Ido Portal says, is pretty damn important.
Movement Complexity is paramount. How do you develop such an attribute as complexity then? You must expose yourself to increased levels of entropy - multiple options and potential disorder. Increasing the amount of entropy within a system usually increases its disorder (which is why most will avoid it...) but in time this drives the complexity of the ‘navigator’ further and enables greater organizational ability. If you are practicing within the same playing field, the same drills, exercises and movements and the same levels of entropy day after day and year after year you are not properly stimulating the most important movement (and arguably .. life)attribute of them all. This might be bad news for all kinds of fixed systems, disciplines and ‘masters’ but it is also incredibly invigorating, stimulating and motivating ideas for all of us. - Ido Portal
Therein lies my main point of contention. The complexity in the movement of a burpee compared to many standard exercises in and of itself offers some benefits. In addition, there are aspects of the burpee Coach Boyle doesn’t mention including the transition from the landing of the jump to quickly and smoothly dropping into the push-up position. There is also the transition from the push-up position back up to standing. I can think of a few sports where these movements not only occur but are necessary under certain time-constraints for success.
Here is a photo of a mixed-martial artist using a sprawl to avoid being taken down.
Below is how the bottom of a sprawl commonly looks when trained in most MMA gyms without an opponent. Looks pretty similar to what happens during burpees:
For the transition from the sprawl or push up position back up to the feet, the “pop-up” in surfing comes to mind.
There is even an exercise called “Surfer Burpees” that surfers use to train the pop up:
The ability to pop-up and catch a wave definitely requires balance, but before balance, it requires dynamic hip mobility to get up and land in the low, stable stance position. I would certainly not say I am a very good surfer but I’ve caught some waves in my 8+ years of surfing… I can say with confidence that popping up for a wave is a lot harder than performing the pop-up phase of a burpee on solid ground. In fact, when I used to do heavy bilateral lifting more often which led to me being quite stiff through the lumbar spine and hips, or when I get super cold in the water without the right wetsuit, I could hardly pop up on sand let alone catch a wave. I was still able to produce a reasonable amount of force in a push-up or jump, but moving my entire body in a dynamic way became “shut down”.
Many aspects of movement are not just reliant on force output in basic ranges of motion, but on fluidity and suppleness throughout the entire body. This includes the ability to move the spine which is an overlooked aspect of training. A burpee involves a reasonable and I’d say a healthy amount of spinal movement. As I heard Ido Portal share the Chinese proverb, “You’re as old as your spine”. He has also said, regarding the spine, “if it (the spine) wasn’t meant to be moved - it would not have this option.”
Now, one can argue that the exact movement pattern or the fluid demands of a burpee are not required or don’t transfer to sports other than surfing and combat. However, aside from the force output required in push-ups and jumping, the ability to get up and down quickly, or “level change” as wrestlers call it, is something a lot of athletes and people, in general, should be after. Imagine the typical 70 years old person doing burpees. They will probably have a hard time since not only force production and mobility tend to go away as we age but movement control as well. Perhaps a large part of this deficit in the elderly is that they largely stop doing challenging movements such as burpees and spend more time sedentary.
Regarding limitations involved in the older populations doing full-on burpees, you can always modify the burpee by bringing the height for the hand placement higher. You can further modify the exercise by having the client walk the feet back instead of sprawl, and squat instead of jump. Now it basically becomes an elevated push-up into a squat.
Again I hear “why not just do the pushups and then train the squat separately?” To which I say, why practice hitting and then running to first base in baseball instead of practicing them isolated? The transitions. Movement transitions are a big part of human movement and athleticism.
