Burpees

One body weight workout that you can do anywhere without any equipment and which helps boost your endurance as well as has a major cardio-component in it is - Burpees. They have proven to be mighty useful in the days of the pandemic as a quick exercise to be done for your cardio. I haven't gone out for a run/ jog or swim for almost 2 months now, and without the Burpees, I would have had no cardio exercise at all. My lovely coach has thoughtfully been giving us some crazy challenges with Burpees (including a 500 Burpees in 4 days challenge recently).

The Burpees have an interesting history. They were invented as a much milder form of exercise by a New York based Physiologist named Royal H. Burpee in the 1930s (hence the name!). The US military subsequently adopted it to be an exercise to measure fitness of army recruits during the World War II. According to this article, being able to perform 41 repetitions in a minute was considered excellent and anywhere less than 27 was considered poor. (I come in the very very poor category currently).

If you have ever participated in a Spartan race then you may recall that the punishment for failing an obstacle is - 30 burpees. Like most lazy people out there, I hate them. The exercise starts out looking simple but in a matter of a few repetitions, every inch of my body starts burning! No wonder it is used as an exercise to evaluate your level of fitness.

Burpee Animation from Sportsrec.com

So next time when you feel like you need to get your heart rate up in a confined space (like your home or even in your hotel room), all you need is 5 minutes and as many burpees as you can!