A complete full body workout you can do anywhere!

Back when I worked Monday through Friday, from 8 to 5, I could usually always find a solid hour to go to the gym after work. More recently, my schedule has become so varied that it is hard to plan lengthy weight lifting workouts in advance. This has also become difficult because I am not always near a gym.

Recently, while figuring out how I was going to heavily modify my workout while still being able to build muscle, I remembered an article I once read in Men's Health Magazine about how prisoners maintain their bodies now that most prisons do not allow them to lift weights. Within the confines of their cell, with no equipment whatsoever, prisoners are still able to maintain lean muscular bodies by doing one simple exercise. The exercise is called a burpee. As Wikipedia puts it:

The burpee is a calisthenic exercise performed to increase strength and explosiveness. Performed in repetitions it also improves cardio-vascular fitness.

This one exercise works out just about every muscle group in your body using your own weight for resistance. To do a burpee, you only need a space that is a little longer than your body and a little less wide than your wingspan. There are a few variations of this workout used for different sports, but to get the most complete full body workout, I suggest the following version:

(The animation is not exact, but it gives you an idea of the motions. *This is not me.)

• Begin by standing straight up with your hands reaching high above your head.
• Drop down as if you are doing a squat, while bringing your hands to the floor. Place your hands firmly on the floor in front of you.
• Kick your legs out behind you so that your body is fully extended, with your hands holding your upper body above the floor, in the push up position.
• Complete one full push up.
• While keeping your hands on the floor, pull your legs back into your body as you move back in to the squat position.
• Use your legs to lift yourself back up as if you are coming up from a squat, while extending your hands back up over your head
• Repeat without pause.

This workout can be modified several ways to accommodate different exercise goals.

• For beginners, it can be done using a modified push up with your knees on the ground during that portion of the exercise.
  
• To increase intensity and muscle endurance, it can be done in slow motion to make the muscles work harder.
• To add more explosiveness to your leg muscles, you can explode up from the squat position and jump as high as you can off the ground before returning to the starting position.
• For a more intense cardio workout, you can do this exercise rapidly without taking rest between sets.
• To focus on different muscles, you can rotate hand and foot position, such as using a wider hand position on the push ups to focus on your outer chest muscles.
  

For the past few weeks, this has been the only strength training exercise I have done. Prior to that, I had taken several months off from strength training due to my schedule. I can honestly say that I am impressed with the results considering the short time it takes to complete several sets of burpees. It's not going to make you look like a body builder, but it is very effective and efficient for building a healthy amount of lean muscle in all the right places, while exercising your heart and lungs, and working to increase your metabolism. It seemed like every muscle in my body was sore after the first day.

As far as the amount of sets and reps go, it all depends on what you can do. I've read that prisoners do descending sets, which means a set of 10, a set of 9, a set of 8, and so on, with their last set being 1 repetition. When I started a couple weeks ago, I could barely do descending sets starting from 5. Now I can successfully complete descending sets from 10 and I'm increasing that every few workouts.

Frequency? Because this exercise relies heavily on a lot of your larger muscles, it should not be done every single day. I usually do it every other day and take weekends off. When I started, I was resting about 2-3 days in between (until my muscle soreness went away).

This exercise isn't for everyone (knee problems, hip problems, etc.), but it has been helping me a lot, so I thought I would share my experience.