Katie Woosley

I love doing my typical leg and arm strength day workouts but some days I want to change it up! I am always looking for new and different style workouts to try. At school, I have access to multiple gyms and lots of equipment, but now that I’m home for clinical I don’t have that anymore, so I do a lot more body weight workouts. My first clinical instructor introduced me to this burpee ladder workout, and it’s a tough one but a good one! It only consists 3 different exercises but it works your whole body and definitely gets your heart rate up. I often create my workouts on the spot, so I like to do this one when I don’t want to have to put thought into my workout. Another great thing about this workout is it is easy to modify based on your fitness level or how you are feeling that day. You can also easily make it shorter or longer based on how much time you have.

The concept of this workout is simple. It consists of 3 exercises: a squat, a burpee, and a push-up. You start with an easy jog to warm up. I have been dealing with some calf issues so I only run half a mile, but you can also do a full mile. After your warm-up, you start “climbing the ladder”, by doing 1 burpee, 1 squat, and 1 push-up. Each set of exercises is followed by a 55 yard sprint. After your sprint, you do 2 burpees, 2 squats, and 2 push-ups, followed by another sprint. You continue this process adding on 1 repetition each round until you get to 10. After 10, is where it gets really rough, because its time to “descend the ladder”. Now, you do 9 burpees, 9 squats, and 9 push-ups followed by a sprint. Continue this process until you are all the way back to 1. I try to take as little rest breaks as possible between sets.

In the beginning, this workout seems easy, but once you start getting close to 10 and then begin working your way back down, it gets hard fast! If you do the full workout you will have completed 100 reps of squats, burpees, and push-ups. That’s a lot of reps with very little rest! This is why I like to do the squat in between the burpees and the push-ups because it helps give my arms a break. When I did this workout the first time, I did full burpees with a push-up which really brings the total push-ups to 200. I will never do that again…my arms were so dead. Now, I do half burpees instead and it’s not quite as terrible. 🙂

Half-burpees are one way to modify this workout, but there are also lots of other ways to make it easier.

• Take the jump out of the burpee
• Shorten the sprint
• Make every other sprint a walk or easy jog
• Do the push-ups on your knees
• Take more rest breaks

There are also ways to make it harder.

• Increase the warm up to 1 mile
• Increase the length of the sprint
• Do full burpees (meaning with the push-up)
• Add weight to the squat
• Do a jump squat instead of a regular squat
• Add a jog at the end

This workout takes me about 30-35 minutes total, depending on how many rest breaks I have to take. If you are short on time, you can simply decrease the amount of reps, so instead of going all the way to 10 you can go to 5 or 8. You could also choose to either work your way up or down the ladder instead of doing both.

Go give this workout a try and let me know how it goes!