Burpees!

No I'm not talking about seeds here. I'm talking about a butt-kicking good exercise you can do when you have limited time, limited space and no access to any exercise equipment.

I did a set of these last night in place of my usual Kenpo workout and let me tell you they work!

Tony has you do something similar in the IntervalX+ workout and he calls them Carlito Three Way Push ups but you only do them for one minute (twice) in that workout. With Burpees, the idea is to do a set of ten, rest for a minute, then do a set of nine, rest another minute, do a set of eight, etc., right down to doing a set of one.

You should be able to the full rotation in less than 15 minutes. By the time I got down to five reps I decided to shorten the rest period to 30 seconds. Then at the end I decided to throw in a final set of 10 to bring the total to 65 reps. It's a great interval workout that combines strength training with cardio exercise.

So how do you do a Burpee?

• Start in a standing position with your hands over your head
• Squat down and place your hands on the floor
• Jump back to plank (push up position)
• Do a push up
• Jump your feet to your hands (so you are in a squatting position again)
• Jump up in the air with your hands over your head

Then just repeat that sequence for the prescribed number of reps.

Mike Rowe from the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs has a good video demonstrating this technique:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-burpees.html