Skipped my workout yesterday due to work. With more work today and the pool closed due to the blizzard, I decided to do some burpees.  (I do the “bastardo” variant that includes a push-up.)

I secretly believe that a 20 minute, 10 sets of 10 burpees (10×10) is the ideal aerobic workout, even though it’s short. It’s high-intensity interval training, basically. Burpees get my heart rate up like no other exercise; I’m basically at my aerobic threshold after the first set.

Today I tried doing a 10×10 set with 30 minute second breaks in between sets. I made it through the first five sets on that schedule; by the end of the very first set, my heart rate was around 160, which is pretty ideal.

On the second half, my form definitely suffered and I had to take longer breaks; I started getting those weird “breathing through my ears” and “jaw pain” symptoms that seem to occur when I do strenuous exercise.  Also, I wasn’t able to keep up with the push-ups through the full set, so I turned them into jumping jacks from a crouched position to keep up the pace.

By the time I finished, which took me about 17 minutes, my heart rate was somewhere around 176. So I probably got in almost of all that exercise close to my optimal range.