Burpees suck. This is an irrefutable fact.

They are the actual worst, which is why doing them is can be liberating.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

No one hates a burpee more than I do. Sure, I probably hate push-ups more, but the sheer suckitude of burpees is irrefutable. Which, as any clear-headed adult will tell you, means they’re probably worth doing. There are few shortcuts in life, and fewer in fitness. More than one trainer in my life—people with advanced degrees in kinesiology and people who are merely shredded—have told me: Do the thing you hate. Then keep doing it.

It pains me to say this but that’s probably one of the truest things I’ve ever heard. The grim existential truth of it is unavoidable as it is defeating. But it’s also kind of liberating. This is gonna suck, so let’s get on with it.

And the more easily you can submit to this idea—the sooner you just say fuck it and admit defeat—the easier it is to make yourself do burpees. They’re never going be fun, but they might get a little easier.

The burpee’s value is in its simplicity: apart from walking and moving your opposable thumb, it’s the most fundamental function of the human body. Getting up and down off the ground—from your chest on the floor to your hands in the air—is crucial to humanity and something only chimps like us can do. (Go ahead and fact-check me, I’m not a primatologist.) And while the act of going from fully prone to off the ground (I also include a lame little hop in my burpees which I believe is customary) should be entirely manageable, doing it repeatedly and within certain time constraints is not. Burpees are an affront to whatever confidence we had in our fitness

I’m doing burpees not only because I hate them but because I need them. I’m in rut: bored and increasingly unable to do my usual dumbbell classes without shoulder and knee drama, and I’m heavier than I’ve been in a long time. I’m actually in the worst shape I’ve been in since I started this fitness bullshit more than 10 years ago.

But I’m not starting from scratch either. I’m kind of maintaining the bare minimum. I’m not trying to get ripped or swole or cut. I’m just trying not to buy new pants. Or shorts. As we’re all about to find out, there’s something particularly unforgiving about the waistline of the shorts you bought three summers ago.

During the pandemic, when my younger kid would—out of charity and extreme boredom—join me for a remote 45-minute HIIT class a few times a week, they would shame me by tossing on an extra, post-class round of 30-40 burpees, which they knocked out as I lay in a puddle beside them. To be honest, I enjoyed the mockery. It felt right.

Anyway, I also remember a friend sharing his pandemic burpee routine, which was deceptively humbling. It was a simple ten minute thing. First minute: do one burpee. Second minute: do two. Third… you get the idea. All the way to ten burpees in the 10th minute.

But the beauty and the pain is in the increasing urgency. At first, you have 55 seconds to rest until your next burpee, more than enough time to send a regrettable text message or click through to save your 27th cabbage recipe on the Times food app). Same with the second. It seems too easy at first. And you’ll be tempted to add some squat jumps or push-ups while you’re waiting for the top of the minute. But by the fifth minute you’re looking at half that time, then less and less, until by the 9th minute you’ve only got a few seconds before you have to knock out another ten.

The rest times get shorter as the load increases and they become harder and harder to do. The increased heart rate, combined with the fatigue of your thighs, core and shoulders, with your increasingly desperate breathing all adds to that fun feeling of panic about whether you’ll get all ten done before that tenth minute is up.

I started on Monday. Made it up to ten with about 8 seconds to spare. (That’s a total of 55 burpees, which is not impressive, but not nothing given the time constraints.) But now I have to add the second half of the challenge, which is to make my way back down from ten, to nine, eight, etc. so that by the 13th minute, you’re doing seven burpees. It looks something like this.

It was during my first round that I stumbled on the real reason to do burpees, and it’s no because they require not equipment and produce very little laundry. It’s because as I’ve gotten older, they’ve gotten noticeably harder to do, as I’ve become less nimble, and more lumbering. Burpees! Now sucking more than ever! My hips are stiffer, the mere act of hauling my 57-year old core self and down and up and down, the lung capacity…all of it’s gotten harder.

I also know that if I keep doing them—yes, if I continue to do the hard thing I truly hate doing—then doing them will get easier. Of course, that may not be true at all. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks.

Programming note: If you find the fitness posts boring or somehow repulsive (and here’s where you should be thankful there’s no corroborating visual evidence of the shirtless burpees), don’t fret. There won’t be much of it.