conditioning
Barbell Burpees
Works in
gym
Equipment
barbell
Primary muscles
full body, posterior chain, cardio
Why do it
This takes the bodyweight burpee and adds a bar, so the conditioning demand of the burpee gets paired with real posterior chain loading from the deadlift finish. It is a brutal EMOM or finisher piece for anyone past the beginner stage, and it builds grip, hip drive and work capacity all at once. Never program it back to back with regular burpees in the same session, the pattern overlap is too much on the shoulders and lower back. Keep the load moderate, 95 to 135 lbs is plenty, this is a conditioning tool, not a max-effort deadlift.
How to do it
A burpee performed on a loaded barbell. Drop down and perform a push-up with your hands on the bar and your chest touching it, jump the feet back in, then grip the bar and finish the rep with a deadlift up to full standing lockout. Full-body conditioning with load in the mix, typical working loads run 95 to 135 lbs.
What the science says
Research on sprint interval training, repeated all-out efforts, shows it lifts your VO2 max, a core marker of fitness, by around 8 percent (Gist et al., 2014, Sports Medicine).
Fun fact
The barbell burpee shares its DNA with the devil press, the loaded burpee-to-dumbbell-snatch combo that CrossFit and functional fitness competitions made famous. Swap the deadlift finish for a snatch and you have basically reinvented that movement.