Of all the bodyweight conditioning exercises that exist, possibly the most effective in terms of overall fitness improvements, fat loss and general work capacity has to be the burpee. There are many variations to this but I'm going to mention some more advanced versions, and some with a combat feel to them.
First of all, I feel it's necessary to cover what I classify as a true burpee. Start from a standing position and squat down placing your hands on the floor outside of your feet, immediatley kick your legs back into a push-up position and drop your chest to the floor (bottom position of a push-up), from here explode up with the arms and bring your feet back up to your hands and from that position jump high into the air. This is a normal burpee, it should always be done with a push-up and explosive jump, no exceptions!! Obviously there are watered down versions of the exercise that can be used to progress people new to the drill. But if you're a combat athlete, you need all of these level changes. Being an ex-police trainer, I have encountered all variations of this great movement, but the one that yields most results, especially in the combat athlete strength and conditioning field (where I work now) is the "full" burpee that I've just described. So begin with a few sets of this variation and perform them as intensely as you can. Build up to a timed test for the drill. Over at rosstraining.com the forum people there have the 100 Burpee Challenge - dead easy??? Yeah right!!! 100 burpees as fast as you can. Not a bad warm-up in itself but if you're short on time it's also a decent stand-alone workout.
If you're happy that you know your burpees, and you want more of a challenge you could change them to what I like to call "Sky diver Sprawls". These beauties are performed exactly the same as burpees except at the bottom of the movement you allow the chest to land on the floor and take your arms out to the side and lift your feet, as if you are a sky diver. This action forces you to explode from a "dead" stop rather than keeping tension though your arms and upper body as in a conventional burpee. These should also be performed at a furious pace, also it's a good idea to throw a boxing combination before each sprawl e.g. 1-2 sprawl, repeat for five minutes or for a total of reps. I promise you, you'll want to throw-up on this drill. If you're not openly cursing me for a thousand years, you ain't doing it intensely enough!!!
The final variation is covered in the photos of this article and it is the burpee-pull-up. To do this simply perform your burpees under a pull-up bar and as you explode out of the bottom squat position, jump up and grab the bar and do 1 pull-up, drop back down and repeat.
This drill pretty much hits every muscle as far as total body work goes. So if you're short on time, this is a great one to do in terms of value. Try to race yourself or a partner to 50 reps of burpee-pull-ups. These are a great addition to anyone's training regime but I'd definitley expect to see them in a fighter's programme.
Moving you body through different planes of movement and through space is a very effective way to improve conditioning, so pretty please, let's leave the seated exercises alone as they do nothing except irritate me!!
