Burpee breathing technique

Burpees is one of the most complete exercise you can do: it puts the entire body to work. Even if it doesn't require pure strength like pushups or pullups, many people (including me during my first session), are exhausted after a few repetitions.

In my case the main challenge was that at first, I couldn't figure out the proper breathing pattern for this exercise. By the time I was done with all the repetitions I was gasping for air.
After a while I realized that the standard exercising pattern only works with short exercises:

• Start exercise = contract muscles = breath-out
• End exercise = relax muscles = breath-in

If you look at Burpee Max completion times, you'll see that it takes ~6 seconds per repetition for beginners to complete a burpee. Even top athletes barely do it under 3 seconds. Try holding your nose for a few seconds while doing physical activity. This is a long time. You'll be quickly out of breath. And that's basically what I was doing by only breathing once per burpee.

Let's have a look at the exercise (disclaimer: I'm not the ripped guy on the pictures below. In case you haven't recognized them, these are screenshots from the Freeletics tutorial video):




I have found that breathing twice per burpee works the best for me:

• Start: you are relaxed and happy. You're misery has not started yet.
• Position 1: breath-in before reaching for the ground
• Position 2: breath-out while landing on the ground
• Position 3: breath-in just before pushing on your arms
• Position 4: hold your breath
• Position 5: breath-out just before or during the small jump
• End: congratulations you made it! Too bad there are more repetitions to follow...

Now, at first when you're just starting training, or at times when you are exhausted, the transition from 3 to 4 may be not be a smooth cat-like jump. It may be more like crawling back up. In which case the burpee will take longer to complete and you may want consider breathing 3 times per repetitions:

• Start.
• Position 1: breath-in before reaching for the ground
• Position 2: breath-out while landing on the ground
• Position 3: breath-in just before pushing on your arms
• Position 3 (bis): breath-out once you are have pushed on your arms 
• Position 4: breath-in while getting back on your feet
• Position 5: breath-out just before or during the small jump
• End: breath-out

Keeping in mind that:

• breathing-in = 1 deep breath through the nose
• breathing-out =  ideally through nose 1 short exhalation, some prefer through mouth or 2 exhalations.
• It may take a while for the pattern to become natural, so you may have to actively think about your breathing when doing the burpee. You may lose focus and take a bit longer to complete the exercise. It's not a big deal to miss a few personal best, as long as it helps you improve on the long-run.

Above is the way that I see breathing for one individual burpee. Try to manage your breath for the entire repetition cycle as well. If you finish repetition 1 just a tiny little bit out of breath, it won't impact your training. You can even do 15 in a row, without much problem. But if you need to do 40 or 50 repetitions, then make sure that your breathing is under control for the entire time. Once out of breath your endurance is over.