In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD, sits down with fitness expert Jordan Syatt to debunk popular fitness myths and discuss the ...

why-burpees-are-the-absolute-worst-exercise-ft-jordan-syatt

Why Burpees Are the Absolute  Worst  Exercise ft. Jordan Syatt

I know that you hate burpees yes why so here's what I'll say if you are training at home and you have no other equipment and you want to do burpees to get movement in fine no problem my issue with burpees is number one as my good friend Ben Bruno says it's an advanced exercise masquerading as a basic exercise beginner exercise it's not a beginner exercise and I see beginners try are being forced to do it all the time it's actually a very high level exercise uh and are when you see people doing it they're like they're like they're flopping all over the place they're using terrible form if we break it down a burpee should be a good squat followed by a good push-up but when you program them 50 75 100 at a time technique breaks down people get injured doing it and you're not actually making progress you're not getting stronger you're not using good technique and and that's where I have the biggest issue the other issue is that a lot of coaches and this is what people who aren't coaches don't understand they put a burp in there when they don't know what else to do a burpee is a filler it's a placeholder and they'll do it because it's going to make you tired and a lot of people think oh if I'm tired my coach is good anybody can make you tired do 100 burpees there you go you're tired yeah right go run around the the mall you're tired go whatever it's not hard to make someone tired it's difficult to make them better to actually get real results and a lot of people they had this idea like I've heard so many people say oh my coach is amazing I throw up after I work out my coach is amazing I'm so sore my coach is amazing I feel dead I'm like why is that amazing it's not hard to do any of that have you gotten stronger have you built more muscle have you lost body fat are your clothes fitting better like are you are you lifting heavier weights these are real progress markers soreness isn't hard again do 100 burpees you'll be  sore tomorrow doesn't make you better and so burpees are an easy way for a coach to make it seem like you're doing something when in reality it's just a placeholder filler instead of doing something that's actually going to help you make progress I would rather someone instead of doing burpees uh just do really good squats instead of doing 100 burpees how about we do like five sets of five really good squats and then five sets of five really good push-ups you got 25 of each and we can actually focus on progressively overloading them making them more of a strength exercise rather than just flopping around like a fish like let's focus on making it really well done with good intent than rather than trying to just get you tired for the sake of being tired yeah no that's really good I cuz I think there's a big misconception like you said that if you're not sweaty you're not working hard enough the next day you're not working hard enough and I think was you who said like if you're not sore that's okay cuz you still want to do things I you still want to pick up my kids and like hug them and like be able to move around and do things the next day and not be like lying in bed like a lame duck you know ex if you're so sore that it's preventing you from getting another workout in you work too hard yeah your your volume was out of control your intensity was out of control you shouldn't be so sore that you can't work out soreness isn't a bad thing it's not an illness like it's normal but you shouldn't be so sore that it's affecting your ability to live your daily life or get another workout in how do you determine your intensity like how do you know when you've reached your max effort It's a Wonderful question and there are many ways to do it there are ways that I would prescribe more for an advanced lifter and there are ways that I would prescribe more for an average everyday person for an advanced lifter I won't go into too much detail but there's actual use percentages so you essentially you find your max on a given movement you L you test it there's a whole protocol for doing it you figure out what your max is for that movement and it's sort of an intense difficult process and then throughout your training you have a a percentage that you work off so let's say you deadlifted I don't know 400 lb then like okay so we're going to work off that percentage so we're going to do like 70% for three sets of five reps on week one then we're going to do 73 and a half% for week two then we're going to do 75% week three uh and you literally do it from a mathematical perspective which there are pros and cons to it and that's more for an advanced population for the average everyday individual I prefer something that's called RP rate of perceived exertion it's a learning curve but essentially uh it's on a 0 to 10 scale and the way I think about it is like 10 you couldn't do another rep like 10 is like if a with a gun to your head that was the last rep you could have done uh and often times a 10 means like your form started to break down a little bit like it that was like your Max Max Max effort nine reps you might be able to get one more rep with a gun to your head maybe eight is now where it's like maybe you had another rep maybe two in there and so you go down like that and then generally I like to have people between like a 6 and 1/2 to an 8 generally speaking uh and it depends on the day if they're if they're feeling really good maybe they're at an eight eight and a half nine on one day but if they're feeling feeling bad maybe they got laid off their job stress is really high maybe they're at like a six six and a half and that's totally fine as long as you're in that range that 6 6 and 1 half to like eight range your intensity is high enough you're going to see progress you will see prog a six correct okay so you don't have to go to failure every time no it's a ter no failure is not bad and occasionally going to failure is fine but if you're going to failure every single time on every exercise like it's a recipe for disaster you're going to hurt yourself not even necessarily hurt as I like it's a higher risk yeah for sure but I would the The Strain mentally and emotionally of going to failure is it's taxing on your central nervous system emotionally like people think they go to fa if you are truly going to failure it's a devastating workout over and over like it's devastating so uh and there are benefits to occasionally doing it it's so funny like people think that you have to go to failure talk to an elite athlete talk to an Olympian Olympian talk to a professional athlete ask them how often they train to True failure and I guarantee you they will say very rarely like definitely not every workout um and it's funny cuz these average everyday gym goers think that they have to be training a failure every time it's like why where the did you come up with that it's made up and it's going to cause more harm than good and I'm I'm hesitant to say it's definitely going to cause injury just because we don't know definitively what is going to cause an injury but it's way more likely and my concern is you're more likely to burn out and not go to the gym at all if you think that you have to keep doing that like if I'm having a bad day or I'm really tired and in my mind I was like I have to train the failure I'm probably just not going to work out yeah if I think it's just not going to make progress it's like listen sometimes an RP 8 might be one weight and then the next week an RP uh 6 might be that same weight but then it could also be reversed MH going by RP makes it less about the weight and more about how you're actually feeling that day which is what I like about it so you for today just be in that RP maybe it'll be more weight than last week maybe it'll be less weight than last week that's okay that's normal just that try and hit that range of RP on a dayto day yeah and I've personally noticed that it fluctuates with where I am in my cyle so like if I'm you know ovulating I might be able to lift more versus if I'm close to menstruation I'm I'm like I can't I can't do it like the same weight I'm going to struggle through that I wasn't able and it also depends on where it is in the workout so like if that machine was busy and I did something else I'm going to come back and I'm going to struggle a little a little harder on that one yes makes sense I mean starting with with what you just said like you just expended more energy on on a different exercise you like physiologically you used energy and then also just the uh the mental side people discount the mental side of lifting like it's a huge component so if you expend more energy and now it's later in the workout and you're a little bit more tired it's going to be more difficult the muscles will be more fatigued already in terms of the menstrual cycle this is a huge debate in the strength world right now huge debate well especially with the menopause space but um yes and there's research saying both surprise surprise some research saying there that it does affect it and some saying it doesn't and for me it's like what the you tell me like if you've been strength training for this long and and you've been you know your cycle you know your body like then let's listen to what you're telling me and and if for some women are like no it doesn't matter it's the same every time other women are like no I'm definitely feeling better and stronger here I have some female clients who are powerlifters who uh they very much feel better at certain times of the month so if they're going to compete in a powerlifting competition we'll make sure it's not going to be during a certain time of the month because it would suck if I scheduled it at a time that they the weakest so it it it's very individual dependent surprise I that's I mean that's in medicine too right we we talk to patients and we give them the data that we have from studies and and what we know and what the treatment options are but like what works for this person is not going to work for that person someone is it may not be my cycle it could be something completely different that like that month happened I just happened to notice that it mirrored my cycle but regardless right like it doesn't matter that's how I'm feeling and that's fine exactly um so and it's also if it happens around the same time every month yeah there's a really good chance that it's due to your cycle possible and like just because the research might not show it yet doesn't mean that it's not true right right it hasn't been debunked ex right I mean not not definitively by any means at all yeah so let's talk about you said you hate burpees are there other exercises that are super popular that you think people shouldn't be doing you know this is something that I've really internally struggled with because on one hand I just want people to exercise I just want them to move yeah um that's the most important for me and when I hate on an individual exercise it's less about the person doing it and more about the coach prescribing it who has no idea what the they're prescribing it for and for me people ask like how do you know if a Coach is a good coach it's impossible to know right away you have to work with them to figure it out but a good coach will be able to tell you exactly why they programmed a specific exercise at that point in the workout for that many sets and Reps or for that duration and they will not get annoyed for you at you asking them and they can tell you exactly what it does and why it's there if they can't tell you outside of it's going to make you tired they don't know what the they're talking about and so I see coaches doing programming a lot of exercises that should not be programmed I think the worst one of all of all of them is doing stuff on a bosu ball on that like especially when it's turned upside down and it's unstable people get really mad when I talk about this and I'll start by saying before you get mad go to the bosu website and you will see on the website of bosu it says do not use this upside down and stand on it they explicitly say this you might well why do they say that so before you say like it's a bad it's not a bad exercise D the company itself says you shouldn't do it and why well because they have been subject to so many lawsuits from people falling off I was an expert witness in a case in 2012 12 or 2013 because a coach had their client an older woman standing on a Bose ball an upside down bosu ball doing not just squats but like throwing a medicine ball at her and catching it and it's like oh it's good for balance she fell off and when IA she destroyed her mean her knee I mean she destroyed forever ACL MCL PCL miniscus everything gone life completely altered as a result of it and this is not a standalone case go on Google type in uh lawsuits around people standing on a bosu ball and you will find that there's a lot of issues and a lot of injuries around it and bosu thank God has done the right thing and said do not stand on this ball upside down it is very dangerous so K vot like props to to bosu for doing that can some people do it sure that doesn't make it a a smart exercise it's still a very stupid idea and bosu by the way there are many great things you can use the bosu ball for but that specific one standing on it on it when it's very unbalanced is unbelievably dangerous and the vast majority of people shouldn't be doing it and not to mention the main reason people will say it's good is because of balance well let's talk about that let's talk about the science of balance balance is demand specific so what that means is if you're training on an unstable surface then you are getting better at balancing on an unstable wobbly surface but how many times in your life are you on an unstable wobbly surface never never even ice is stable it's just slippery right so you're when you want to train to get better at balance you should train in a way that mimics what you do daytoday which is probably standing on the floor where do most people end up falling going up and down stairs going off of a curb so I don't know maybe doing a step up off of a stable surface doing a lunge doing a a step down these things mimic what you do every single day and actually have more demand specificity than standing on a wobbly surface the main people who might benefit uh the from an upside down bosu ball and I'm not recommending it just like bosu isn't but people who surf for their Sports uh people who if you work on a boat I don't know like a boat might be like people who work on a boat on a Fisherman's Boat might be a good idea but then again you probably get all you need from your job and from surfing right so it's it's probably not worth the risk of doing that so standing on a Bosey ball upside down doing squats is is one of the all-time worst dumbest exercises for sure

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