30-day burpee challenge: build up from step-back burpees, with rest days

Your step, and the day 1 test

Five steps, from easiest: 1, hands on a bench or step, step back one foot at a time to a plank, step back in and stand up; 2, the same with your hands on the floor; 3, jump both feet back and in, then stand up; 4, the full burpee, with a jump up and your arms overhead, landing softly; 5, add a push-up in the plank, only once step 4 is steady. The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) calls the full burpee an advanced exercise and starts beginners with the step-back version.

On day 1, do 10 burpees at your step at a steady pace you could keep going, time them, and rate how hard they felt from 0 to 10. On day 30, repeat them at the same step, and once more at your new step if you've moved up: a faster time at a lower effort is progress. Move up a step when your practice sets feel easy at the top of the range and your form holds to the last rep. The test and the move-up rule are our editorial starting points.

If you're used to hard exercise and the PAR-Q+ (the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire for Everyone) raised nothing, you can also do the 3-minute burpee test from our burpee guide. In 9,833 students aged 18 to 25, the average was about 57 for men and 49 for women; there are no norms for other ages, so compare yourself with your own day 1.

Sources 1, 2, 3

How hard each part should feel

Practice sets are easy to moderate: you can talk in short sentences, and each set ends while your form holds, as NASM advises. Efforts are hard but clean, a few words at most, at a pace you can keep. In the ladder, stop when a minute's burpees take longer than about 40 seconds or your form slips.

Never trade form for speed: brace so your hips don't sag in the plank, stand up with your chest up, land softly with bent knees, and breathe out as you step or jump back. These effort levels are our editorial guide.

Source 1

One easy day and up to two hard days a weekEmerging evidence

Trials of short interval circuits used 2 to 4 sessions a week, and our HIIT and burpee guides put hard sessions at once or twice a week for most people. So Monday stays easy, the hard days start in week 2, and there's a rest day between every burpee session; the layout is our editorial choice.

Efforts go up by one a week, from 4 to 6, and the ladder grows from 5 to about 10 minutes, peaking at about 100 to 140 burpees a week, against about 700 for 100 a day. Rapid rises in training load are a major injury risk in an International Olympic Committee consensus, and more isn't automatically better: burpee-only intervals three times a week kept fitness steady without improving it in 26 cadets.

Sources 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

If a day is too hard, or you miss one

Drop back a step, cut an effort or stop the ladder early: your step is the plan, not the date. Missed a session? Do the next one rather than doubling up; missed a week, repeat the week before. Don't train hard with a cold or a fever: wait until you feel better, as the PAR-Q+ advises.

On bad days for your knees or back, swap to step jacks and sit-to-stands, as in our low-impact cardio workout. If missing a day makes you anxious, or you find yourself exercising to make up for food, talk to your GP: after a month-long daily activity challenge, some people described feeling like a failure when they missed their targets.

Sources 3, 9

What burpees trainEmerging evidence

Burpees are hard conditioning: in 11 trained students, all-out efforts reached about 78% of peak oxygen uptake and 85% of peak heart rate, a little below sprint cycling. Short interval circuits that included burpees raised aerobic fitness by about 8% in 4 weeks in 22 young women and by 11% in 15 adults, beat no training over 6 weeks in 19 inactive adults, and raised push-up endurance by 135% in one trial; 16 to 27 minutes a week of bodyweight training did as well as 90 in 58 young adults.

Burpee-only programmes did less: they kept fitness steady without improving it in 26 cadets, and improved jumping rather than running fitness in 43 active adults. So this plan mixes practice, short efforts and a ladder. These trials were small and short, so how much you change by day 30 varies from person to person. In one small study, people enjoyed short burpee intervals more than a steady run.

Sources 10, 4, 5, 6, 11, 7, 12, 13

Calories: our rough arithmetic

Vigorous intervals with burpees are rated at 11 METs (multiples of your resting energy use) in the Compendium of Physical Activities. By our rough arithmetic, that's about 13 calories a minute of actual burpees for a 70 kg person, more if you weigh more and less if you weigh less.

If 100 burpees take about 5 to 7 minutes, which is an estimate, that's roughly 65 to 90 calories. This plan's weekly burpees come to at most about 10 to 12 minutes of actual work, or roughly 130 to 160 calories a week. Beginners doing step-back burpees at an easy pace probably burn less than the rating suggests. These are ranges, not promises: our calories burned calculator works it out for your weight and time.

Source 14

Burpees don't burn belly fatStrong evidence

No exercise burns fat from one spot: across 13 studies of 1,158 people, training one body part didn't take fat off it. European obesity guidance expects no more than about 2 to 3 kg of weight loss on average from exercise alone, partly because people tend to eat more, and each extra 30 minutes a week of aerobic exercise took off about half a kilogram across 116 trials in adults with overweight or obesity.

Eating a little less does most of the work, and our weight loss plan covers it. This challenge is for fitness and better burpees, not weight loss.

Sources 15, 16, 17, 18

Knees, back and wristsEmerging evidence

In 100 adults in 6-week group strength-endurance classes, there were 9 injuries per 1,000 hours of training, mostly knees and backs, with burpees and squats the commonest movements behind them. That doesn't make burpees harmful for healthy knees.

Land softly with bent knees, brace so your hips don't sag in the plank, and use the no-jump steps or the low-impact swap when anything is sore. For sore wrists, use fists, push-up handles or dumbbells, or a bench: in a lab study of 8 donated wrists, a push-up with the wrist bent back raised pressure in part of the wrist joint.

Sources 19, 20

Your pelvic floorStrong evidence

Leaking during jumps is common: in a survey of 452 women fitness competitors, 10% leaked during burpees, and more with skipping. Pelvic floor muscle training cures or improves stress incontinence: women who did it were about 8 times more likely to report a cure (56% against 6%).

If you leak, stay on the no-jump steps, squeeze your pelvic floor just before each jump, see a GP about it, and see our pelvic floor guide. With a prolapse, the NHS advises avoiding activities that strain the pelvic floor, so stay on steps 1 and 2 unless a pelvic health physiotherapist agrees.

Sources 21, 22, 23, 24

After a birthMixed evidence

After a birth, the NHS advises avoiding high-impact exercise to start with, and UK guidelines suggest building from moderate to vigorous activity over at least 3 months after your 6 to 8-week check. A UK postnatal return-to-running guideline (Goom 2019) advises against running before 3 months after the birth, and its readiness tests include hopping and jogging on the spot with no pain, heaviness, dragging or leaking; we apply the same wait to the jumping steps.

That 3-month timing is expert opinion from one guideline, not a trial finding. Steps 1 and 2 have no jumps: start there once your midwife, GP or physiotherapist agrees, and see our postpartum and pelvic floor guides first.

Sources 25, 26, 27

Check first if this applies to youStrong evidence

Before day 1, answer the PAR-Q+. A yes to any of its 7 questions, such as a heart condition or high blood pressure, chest pain, or losing your balance through dizziness, leads to follow-up questions that may send you to your doctor or a qualified exercise professional first; one asks whether your resting blood pressure is 160/90 or higher, and to answer yes if you don't know. It also asks people over 45 who aren't used to vigorous to maximal effort to check with a qualified exercise professional first: the practice sessions are fine to start, but check before the hard efforts and the 3-minute test.

If you're inactive and have heart, metabolic or kidney disease, or symptoms such as chest pain or unusual breathlessness on effort, American College of Sports Medicine screening advises medical clearance first. European obesity guidance advises a heart-risk check and supervision before high-intensity intervals for people living with obesity, so start on step 1 with your hands on a higher bench, and leave out the hard efforts until you've had that check.

Don't start burpees in pregnancy: the NHS advises against starting new vigorous activity. With osteoporosis and spinal fractures or several low-trauma fractures, the UK consensus advises keeping impact to about that of brisk walking, so stay on the no-jump steps. With ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome), NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) advises against programmes with fixed increases, which is what a challenge is.

Sources 3, 28, 16, 29, 30, 31

Warning signsStrong evidence

Call 999 (911 in the US) for chest pain that doesn't go away, spreads to your arms, neck, jaw, stomach or back, or comes with sweating, feeling sick, light-headedness or breathlessness, and if someone faints while exercising. In the US, call 911 for heart attack symptoms even if you're not sure.

Dark, red or cola-coloured urine, much less urine than usual, or very painful, weak or swollen muscles in the days after a session can be rhabdomyolysis, a breakdown of muscle that can harm the kidneys: get medical help the same day. Call 999 or go to A&E for sudden, severe pain in any part of your body, which can be compartment syndrome: one man needed surgery on the shoulder muscles of both sides after 18 hours of burpees following a long work shift. Both are rare and follow unaccustomed, extreme or badly planned exercise.

Call 999 or go to A&E for back pain with pain, tingling, weakness or numbness in both legs, loss of feeling around your genitals or bottom, or new problems peeing or pooing. Contact NHS 111 for a knee you can't move or put weight on, or that is badly swollen, has changed shape, locks or gives way, and for severe wrist pain or a wrist you can't move.

Sources 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42

When exercise stops being good for youStrong evidence

Exercising too much, and worrying a lot about your weight and body shape, are among the signs of an eating disorder the NHS lists. Beat, the eating disorder charity, describes unhealthy exercise as rigid or punishing, often done in secret, done despite injury or illness, or used to make up for eating.

If that sounds familiar, talk to your GP, or call Beat's helpline (3pm to 8pm, Monday to Friday): England 0808 801 0677, Scotland 0808 801 0432, Wales 0808 801 0433 and Northern Ireland 0808 801 0434. Our eating disorders guide has more.

Sources 43, 44, 45

After the 30 daysEmerging evidence

A challenge is a start. Habits take longer than 30 days to form: in the four studies of a review that timed it, the typical time was 59 to 66 days, ranging from 4 to 335. After a 24-day push-up challenge in Australia, activity was a little higher 2 weeks later but no higher at 3 months, and in 389,481 fitness app users, training steadily in the first 28 days was the strongest sign of still training a year later.

So pick your next step before day 30: keep one or two interval sessions a week, such as the HIIT workout at home or the Tabata-style workout, alongside two strength days.

Sources 46, 47, 48