I'm Charlie Atkins and this is The Right Way.

Today we are talking about everybody's favorite exercise, the burpee.

So burpees are really hard.

Nobody really likes to do them and there's a lot that can go wrong in a burpee.

This is what a bad burpee looks like.

I totally overreacted on that but as you can tell there was a lot going on.

The right way to do a burpee is actually combining four different exercises.

We're combining a jump, a squat, a plank and a pushup all into one.

Burpees are really effective if you do them correctly because they're a total body strengthening movement.

So this is the right way to do a burpee.

First, I need a strong jump.

So my head is in line with my heels.

I'm going to come down, knees go wide and I'm just hopping up and landing right back down into my squat.

When I land into my squat I want to make sure that I have a soft landing.

So I'm just jumping up and coming right back down.

From there I'm coming into a squat.

Head stays in line with my tailbone, knees go out wide and I'm dropping straight down but my chest is staying up.

So here's my squat.

So I went from my jump right into my squat.

From there, hands have to come down.

My knees need to be wider than my elbows.

That way I can kick myself back.

Now I don't want to lose my back here so I'm keeping a nice flat back and then all I have to do is jump back.

Now in plank position, shoulders right over the wrist, body nice and flat, straight line from my head to my heels.

From there all I have to do is a lowering plank, meaning I'm going straight down and coming right back up.

From here I need to jump my knees on the outsides of my elbows so that my knees are tracking over my toes.

That way I can come right back up into the jump.

Now if a full burpee is too challenging, which they often are, you can completely eliminate the pushup.

So I start with my jump.

I land with knees wide, hands are coming down and all I'm going to do is kick my feet back.

Straight line from my head to my heels and then I'm jumping my feet right back up, knees outside of the elbows, tracking over the toes and jumping up and repeating.

And one more modification, if you want to make this more of a low impact move, you just take out the jump and you walk it back.

So again, starting over here, all I'm going to do is I'm going to squat down, hands are going to come down, I'm going to walk one foot and then the other and then I'm going to walk back, back and up.

So let's talk about breath work throughout the exercise.

You want to make sure that you're doing the walk back or the walk back forward and then lower right back down.

So again, always want to make sure that you're breathing out on the hardest part and always taking breaths throughout the entire exercise.

Or if you're doing the advanced version, the jump back and the jump back forward.

Or if you're doing the more advanced version, the pushup.

Breath is important.