100 Burpees A Day: What Results Can You Get?

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Just doing a few burpees is likely not enough to get the results you desire. Find out whether doing 100 burpees a day is a better idea and what it can do.

The result of burpees that is easiest to put into an exact number is the number of calories you can burn.

As an example, a 155-pound person will burn around 65 calories during the 100 burpees a day. At high intensities, there could also be an afterburn effect.

Besides that doing 100 burpees a day can also help improve cardiovascular health, muscle endurance, sleep, mood, etc.

One thing you want to keep in mind is that this workout routine will only be around 7 minutes of high-intensity cardiovascular exercise a day.

For many fitness goals, including hitting (good) exercise guidelines for adults and losing weight, you want to consider doing other workouts too and/or paying attention to other lifestyle habits like your diet.

Benefits of doing 100 burpees a day

You may vaguely know that doing more exercise tends to be good for you.

Even so, learning about the more specific benefits of doing 100 burpees a day can motivate you to undertake a challenge like this and help you get an idea of what it takes to achieve goals like weight loss.

Doing 100 burpees a day burns extra calories

Throughout the day, your body uses up energy to function. One of the things that influence how much energy (measured in calories) you need is the speed of your movements.

Doing 100 burpees likely involves movements that are more intense than your usual daily activities. This makes you burn more calories.

With the predictions per minute and that the average person does around 15 repetitions per minute, you can roughly estimate that people with different body weights burn the following amounts of calories with 100 burpees:

  • 125 pounds (56 kg) body weight: 53 calories
  • 155 pounds (70 kg) body weight: 65 calories
  • 185 pounds (83 kg) body weight: 78 calories
  • 215 pounds (97 kg) body weight: 90 calories

Keep in mind that these are rough estimations. The actual number of calories you burn with 100 burpees will likely be different because of differences in things like body composition, hormone levels, and exact speed.

That being said, these are relatively nice amounts for 7 minutes of exercise. Especially if you do this every day for a month, for a year, or for longer periods of time.

Additionally, you can potentially get some afterburn if you do the burpees intensely enough. This is where you burn extra calories for a short amount of time after you stop the exercise.

Will it help you lose weight?

While burning calories may sound nice, you are likely interested in the nice before and after weight loss results this offers.

However, something important to keep in mind is that how many burpees you should do a day to lose weight does not only depend on the number of calories the exercise burns.

To lose weight you need to make it so your body requires more energy than is coming in from food. At this point, you start using energy stores like body fat to get the difference.

So burpees can help weight loss in the sense that they increase your energy consumption.

On the flip side, you still need to pay enough attention to other lifestyle habits like your diet to see results from doing a challenge like 100 burpees a day.

100 burpees a day can improve muscle endurance and potentially size

You will definitely work your muscles while doing the 100 burpees a day. At the same time, this is not always enough to cause growth.

Generally speaking, an exercise can help you build muscle even in high-repetition ranges like 50 reps if your muscles fatigue within this range. After that, the exercise may be too easy for significant muscle growth.

That being said, one downside of burpees for this goal is that they are challenging for your cardiovascular system too.

There are many people that can’t do 50 good burpees in a row. However, often, these people get out of breath before their muscles really fatigue.

If you can only do 100 burpees a day in a way where your cardiovascular system fatigues first, this exercise routine is generally not that effective for muscle growth.

At the same time, even if this is the case, the burpees could improve muscle endurance in your chest, triceps, front deltoids, core muscles, and leg muscles.

It can improve your cardiovascular health

Body parts like your heart, lungs, and blood vessels make up your cardiovascular system.

This system is responsible for extracting oxygen from the air and moving this oxygen, nutrients, and waste products to the right places inside of your body.

When you move more intensely during something like burpees these things have to happen to a larger extent. In turn, your cardiovascular system will work harder.

By challenging the system intensely enough (but not too much), you can strengthen it.

This is helpful since having a stronger cardiovascular tends to reduce the risk of related conditions (1, 2, 3).

You may sleep better

You likely know that better sleep quality and duration can help things like your mood, cognitive function, and general health. However, not everyone knows how to improve these areas of sleep.

One of the things that can positively influence sleep quality and duration is exercise (4, 5, 6).

That means one of the benefits of doing 100 burpees a day is that it can improve your sleep.

Something you do want to keep in mind about this benefit of burpees is that exercising too close to bedtime tends to be suboptimal for sleep. Ideally, you would do your burpees for at least an hour or two before going to sleep.

Your coordination may get better

Not everyone is aware of it but arm and leg coordination are fitness skills that can be improved by challenging yourself in these areas.

Burpees are not the most challenging movement in this area but they do involve the moving and feedback that can benefit your skills in these areas.

Better arm and leg coordination will not only make the 100 burpees easier to do. These things can also help in daily activities like walking around, climbing stairs, and reaching toward things.

Is 100 burpees a day good enough?

For most people, doing 100 burpees a day at a high speed can be enough to burn a nice amount of calories and improve cardiovascular to at least some extent.

Whether they are enough for weight loss and/or building muscle depends on a variety of other facts.

You may also want to know how good 100 burpees a day is for improving general health. To get an idea of this, it can be helpful to look at general exercise guidelines.

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion recommends the following exercise guidelines to adults (7):

  • Moving more and sitting less throughout the day
  • At least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity a week. Preferably spread throughout the week.
  • You can gain additional health benefits by engaging in physical activity beyond the equivalent of 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week.
  • Muscle-strengthening activities of moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.

Burpees are generally considered to be a vigorous-intensity aerobic activity.

Since doing 100 burpees take only about 7 minutes of actual exercise, it should be clear that this routine is not enough to hit the general exercise guidelines for cardiovascular activity.

On top of that, you would preferably also implement resistance training workouts two times a week or more.

Is it OK to do 100 burpees every day?

Burpees are an exercise that can be rough on your body. Especially for people who are new to exercise and/or are carrying around a few extra pounds.

For fitter people, it will likely be OK to do 100 burpees every day. That being said, for many people, a challenge like this would also be too much and potentially lead to injuries.

Because human bodies can be so different, it is hard to make any precise statements about this.

The best way to figure out the answer to this question is to implement the burpee routine and stop in time if there are signs of overtraining.

If you really want to stay away from injuries, you would start with something smaller like 5 or 10 burpees once.

When that goes well, you can consider doing a workout like this more often or increasing how many burpees you do.

If you notice the burpees are currently too hard for you, you can start with walking, the elliptical trainer, swimming, or other burpee alternatives to prepare your body for more intense workouts.

How to do 100 burpees a day

Even if you are convinced about doing 100 burpees a day, you may not have the strength to do them (yet) and/or you may be unsure what the best sets and reps would be for your goals.

First of all, if doing 100 burpees a day is currently too challenging for one of your muscle groups, you can train these with other exercises first.

As an example, many people struggle with the pushup part of burpees. To be able to do this step better and for more repetitions, you can start with pushup progressions.

Next, the guidelines for how you should do the 100 burpees a day for optimal cardiovascular health are not that precise due to lack of human knowledge.

That being said, since they should only take around 7 minutes of exercise, you likely just want to do all the repetitions in one set. Potentially in more sets with fewer reps if needed.

Lastly, to build muscle you want to do the 100 burpees in sets where you really push to muscle failure. The exact numbers will vary a lot from person to person.

If you can do more than 50 burpees in a row without muscle fatigue, you likely want to do the exercise with a weighted vest if you are interested in muscle growth.

FAQ

How long should 100 burpees take?

If you do them in one set, 100 burpees should take around 7 minutes to do. With a break in between two sets, around 10 minutes.

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Author:

Matt Claes founded Weight Loss Made Practical to help people get in shape and stay there after losing 37 pounds and learning the best of the best about weight loss, health, and longevity for over 4 years. Over these years he has become an expert in nutrition, exercise, and other physical health aspects.