I recently received this email from one of our members following the CrossFit Open wod 14.5 and one of our long Sexy Metcon Burpee wods programmed the following week (on Tuesday).  I personally have never been a fan of burpees and think Steven might be on to something here.  Please give this a read, I think you may be able to relate with Steven on this one.

Why we need more OLY at Synergy

or

Why I hate burpees and why they are stupid

In the following, I’m going to argue why we should not do burpees.   I’m not going to base my arguments against burpees on basis of the exercise physiology and their health benefits that you will hear from Chad or Professor Bulcher.  Instead my argument against burpees is based on why they are bad for your mind, body and soul.

Burpees are bad for your brain.   Other forms of exercise, especially OLY movements force you to focus your mental attention and be in the present.  As a result, they are an excellent way to train your brain to engage Type 2 thinking which Nobel Laureates like Kauffman will tell you is essential to reducing mental errors.  In fact, Type 2 thinking reduces prejudicial thinking.  Thus, more OLY would lead to a better kinder society.    In contrast, burpess force yourself to throw yourself to the ground, get up, and repeat.    Nothing could be worse for your brain.   It engages your Type 1 automatic reflexes.  As a result, burpees lead to bad medicine, science and you guessed it, racism.   Thus, burpees make you a professionally incompetent racist.

As an aside, exercises such as swimming, running or bicycling that allow you to autopilot, allow you brain to relax and freely associate.   This typically leads to more creative solutions to complex problems and not to racism or incompetence.  Many of our major science, policy or other advances, have come from people who are day dreaming as they bike, swim or run.

Burpees are a stupid body movement.    You are throwing your body to the ground, where your chest and shoulders take the brunt of the force.  Then you are kicking your legs back and hoping you don’t break a toe.  Then you repeat, ad nauseum.   For men, there is the added risk that if you hit flat, you are likely going to impact a rather delicate part of your anatomy.     So a big guy like me hurts his shoulders as they absorb burpee after burpee.  Other people, like my wife, twist their ankle throwing their foot back.  In contrast, when you get an OLY movement right, you feel GREAT!, it’s smooth and beautiful.    When you get a burpee right, the only thing you can think is, I’m glad I didn’t slam my nades this time.

Burpees are bad for the soul.  Be it a football coach, who after 2 hours of practice, decides that 20 minutes of burpees will really help you win that championship or a warrant officer that decides that doing burpees in tear gas is a good idea, I’ve only encountered burpees being used in a sadistic manner.  But never in my life, has anyone who has been pissed off at me said:  “Go do some Cleans!  That’ll teach you!”.  Thus, burpees are bad for coaches as they will make you all sadists and this is a bad thing.  Remember Marquis de Sade.  In fact, assigning burpees should be grounds for us to deny you firearm privileges and search your computer for illegal images.   In contrast, assigning OLYs lets your participants do beautiful movements all day and become highly competent professionals who approach all people equally without prejudice.

Let’s make Synergy a safe environment, where we all become highly competent and do beautiful movements.  Ban Burpees!

Steven Siciliano