The Metabolic Trifecta: Burpees, Box Jumps, & Double-Unders

What did I learn at CrossFit this week? Burpees, box jumps, and double-unders will EXHAUST you (in a good way!). For all my non-crossfitting friends out there, I strongly recommend these exercises if you want to get in a good, quick workout (say you only have 10-15 minutes but want to get in some metabolic conditioning). It's also interesting because even though these are quick conditioning movements, I still feel that my yoga practice helps me perform these movements, and vice versa. For example, jumping forward and back to chaturanga has really helped me with the jumping forward and back of burpees. Similarly, learning to engage the core for difficult poses and jumps in yoga has helped me to engage the core when jumping onto a box or lifting a bit higher for a double under (FINALLY got them for the first time today!).

How to perform these movements? Info on each exercise is below:

How to do a burpee: photo via crossfit.com

Burpees:











If you've never done one before, burpees are killer. If you're a yogi, imagine jumping back to chaturanga, pressing back up to plank, then jumping forward to a squat and up to standing (I like to clap overhead), and then going right back down and doing it again. EXHAUSTING. 

Here's how crossfit.com describes it (although they don't mention the push up at the bottom from the plank position, which is how we have always done it):
From a stand, take a crouch sitting position; then a stoop falling position; back to a crouch sitting position and return to stand. These four successive movements constitute one burpee.

Want to get a quick burpee workout in? Do 50 as hard as you can and see how long it takes you. Trust me, you'll be wiped out! (Sidenote: there's a 100-burpee challenge that I'd love/hate to do. You do 1 burpee the first day, 2 the second, 3 the third, etc., all the way up to 100. Crazy, huh?)

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How to do box jumps: photo via thefitblog.net

Box Jumps:









A fairly straightforward, although not easy, workout. You basically pick a box (or a park bench, or a bleacher, whatever you can find) and jump up onto it, then get down--you can step or jump down from it--and do it again! Most important part of it is to fully extend the hips at the top (come all the way to standing and straighten legs/hips). You wouldn't believe how quickly your heart gets going when you do these!

Want to get a quick box jump workout in? Do 1 minute of box jumps, one minute rest, then 1 minute box jumps, etc. for 10 minutes. So much fun and gets the body going!

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Ben (MASTER at double-unders) at the Courage games last summer.

Double Unders:

Double-unders are a bit more challenging than the other two movements. I just got my first real set of double-unders today (yay!) after trying for quite a while. Basically, it's a jump-rope exercise where you swing the rope twice under your feet with each jump, but I find that it's much harder than it sounds. If you can do these (some people learned as children and it will always be easy for them!), great! If not, start with regular jump-roping, become a pro at that, and if you keep working at them, the double-unders will come eventually.

Want to try a quick double-under workout? I'm told that the "golden standard" for double-unders is 2 minutes straight, so feel free to go for that when working on these. If that's too much, just work on jumping rope for 2-5 minutes straight and use this as a warm-up for the other two movements.

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And there you have it! Quick CrossFit movements that even non-CrossFitters (and my fellow yogis!) can benefit from physically. Try them--you'll have a lot of fun! A recommendation for a quick beginners workout using all 3 of these movements (courtesy of my CrossFitting boyfriend)...

3 rounds of the following with 1 minute of rest in-between:
-1 minute burpees
-1 minute box jumps
-1 minute double-unders (or regular jump rope)

If you go as hard as you can for the entire 3 minutes each round, you may look like this at the end:

Ben when he finished at the Courage Games. He was delirious :)

Hehe!!! This picture always cracks me up.

Enjoy your BEAUTIFUL, sunny Sunday!

Namaste,
Mary Catherine