By Sheryl Dluginski Special to DNAinfo.com
NEW YORK — Maybe you remember it from your high school gym class, or maybe your trainer or boot camp instructor makes you do it in high intensity circuits, but most fitness-minded people are familiar in some way with the deceptively difficult-yet-simple exercise known as the squat thrust — or the Burpee.
Start by standing tall, squat down low, shift your weight to your hands and jump your feet back to a plank — the starting position for a push-up — then jump your feet forward again between your hands, and stand back up.
String a few of these together and feel your heart rate soar and every major muscle group activate.
The Burpee is a popular staple in many of today's most challenging workouts, from CrossFit to boot camps to sports performance and triathlon training. For even the fittest folks, it's a dreaded and highly effective way to build strength, stamina and coordination.
As a personal trainer and holistic fitness fanatic, I know and use this move regularly, but my connection to it is far more personal.
My paternal grandfather, Royal H. Burpee, invented it.
"Goog," as he was known to me, created the movement as the centerpiece of his PhD thesis in Applied Physiology from Columbia Teacher's College in 1939. The lone remaining copy of his published thesis, which details how and why he devised the unique and powerful combination of movements, sits on a shelf at Generations Fitness, my health and fitness studio.
Family folklore holds that "Nana Ella," Goog's wife and my grandmother, dutifully typed and retyped each draft of the 150-page manuscript, complaining bitterly all the while. Nana always said recreating the abundance of charts and tables on her typewriter was far more challenging than doing the exercise itself.
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