Burpee

The burpee is a bodyweight conditioning exercise. From standing, the body drops to a chest-to-floor plank, then drives back up to a jump. No kettlebell is used. The exercise trains full-body conditioning and tests the glycolytic system under fatigue. Used in the Kettlebell Complex protocol as the cardio station of the capacity-test AMRAP.

Mechanics and load path

Start standing. Drop the hands to the floor and kick or step the feet back to a plank. Lower the chest to the floor, then reverse the sequence and finish with a jump. The protocol calls for a full burpee with no backward-step shortcut.

The failure mode under fatigue is a collapsing midsection at the bottom. When the hips sag as the chest meets the floor, the lower back absorbs the load. Holding a braced plank through the bottom keeps the spine safe even as the pace climbs.

In the Kettlebell Complex protocol

Burpee is the sixth and final station of the capacity-test AMRAP (S6, S12, S18), five reps with no bell. As the only bodyweight cardio element in the test, it spikes the heart rate. It exposes the glycolytic capacity that the twenty-minute benchmark is built to measure.

Used in: Program 01 — Kettlebell Complex