Trainer Charlee Atkins's Burpee Alternatives
Trainer Charlee Atkins Says Burpees Are a "Recipe For Injury" and Suggests These 5 Moves Instead
If you aren't the biggest fan of burpees, there are other moves you can consider adding into your workout. Certified strength and conditioning specialist Charlee Atkins, founder of Le Sweat, whom POPSUGAR has featured in Instagram Live workouts, named some "burpee alternatives that will shape you into a better worker-outer."
These burpee alternatives include a sprawl, or what we call "squat thrust;" jump squat; kick thru; lateral bound, or "side skater;" and push-up. "A true burpee includes a jump squat and a push-up," Atkins wrote in the comments of her post, so three of these moves, specifically the push-ups, sprawls, and jump squats, let you do components of a burpee separately.
Atkins further wrote in the comments that, in her opinion, burpees don't train you "to do anything other than splat yourself on the ground repetitively. They are a recipe for injury." Instead, she said she'd suggest that people train for actual movements that they do in everyday life or "better power-generating exercises that will serve you more over time than a burpee," which is what the five burpee alternatives she named are, according to her.
Click through the Instagram video carousel above for Atkins's demonstrations of each move. And, for other burpee alternatives that beginners in particular might like, check out our roundup of moves like plank to lunge and frogger. To burpee or not to burpee? That is the question, and it's your prerogative, but know that you have other options if you so choose.
