No, doing burpees won’t increase your height. Burpees build strength, improve cardiovascular fitness, and support overall health, but they can’t lengthen your bones. If you’re still a teenager with open growth plates, regular exercise can support healthy development during your growing years. Once those growth plates close, burpees (or any other exercise) can’t add height.
Key Takeaways
- Burpees do not directly increase height or lengthen bones in adults.
- Teenagers can benefit from burpees as part of a balanced routine, but the exercise doesn’t guarantee extra height.
- Burpees may cause a short-term rise in growth hormone, which is not the same thing as gaining height.
- Better posture can make you look taller without changing your actual skeletal height.
- Genetics, nutrition, sleep, and overall health drive growth during childhood and adolescence, not any single exercise.
- Proper form and steady progression matter more than cramming in extra reps.
Does Doing Burpees Increase Height?
Can Burpees Make You Taller Naturally?
Burpees can’t make you taller, no matter how many sets you grind through. Height comes from the growth plates near the ends of your long bones, and once those plates fuse, bone length is locked in, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. No amount of squatting, jumping, or push-up work changes that process.
Do Burpees Affect Teenagers and Adults Differently?
Age changes everything here. A 15-year-old with open growth plates may still be gaining height from puberty itself, with or without exercise. A 25-year-old with fused growth plates won’t gain a single inch from burpees, regardless of effort or intensity.
How Do Burpees Affect Growth Hormone and Posture?
Do Burpees Increase Human Growth Hormone?
Intense exercise, including burpees, can trigger a short-term rise in growth hormone. That spike fades within hours and has no established link to greater adult height. Treating a temporary hormone bump as proof of future inches is a common mix-up, and it’s worth untangling before you build a routine around it.
Can Burpees Improve Posture and Make You Look Taller?
Burpees work your core and stabilizer muscles, which can translate into better posture over time. Standing up straight genuinely changes how tall you appear. But it doesn’t add anything to your actual skeletal height, it just stops you from losing the height you already have to slouching.
How to Do Burpees Correctly for Fitness and Healthy Growth
How to Perform a Burpee Step by Step
Form matters more than speed, especially early on.
- Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart.
- Squat down and place your hands on the floor.
- Step or jump your feet back into a plank position.
- Step or jump your feet forward again.
- Stand up or add a controlled jump at the top.
- Repeat, keeping your spine neutral throughout.
How Many Burpees Should Beginners and Teenagers Do?
A reasonable starting point is two sets of five to eight controlled reps, adjusted to your fitness level. Land softly, keep your trunk steady, and stop if you feel pain or dizziness. There’s no scientifically backed rep count that increases height, so chasing volume for that reason is wasted effort.
What Are the Real Benefits of Doing Burpees?
Do Burpees Build Strength and Cardiovascular Fitness?
Burpees train your legs, chest, shoulders, and core in one movement, which is part of why they show up in so many conditioning programs. They also raise your heart rate fast, making them a solid tool for cardiovascular endurance and muscular stamina.
Can Burpees Improve Coordination and Bone Health?
The jumping and landing components ask your body to coordinate multiple muscle groups at once, which sharpens movement control over time. Weight-bearing exercise like this, done at an appropriate dose, supports bone health during the growing years. A short burpee circuit fits naturally into a high schooler’s gym class or sports warmup.
Burpees can support:
- Cardiovascular endurance.
- Whole-body muscular conditioning.
- Movement coordination.
- Core strength and stability.
- Weight-bearing physical activity.
They’re a solid conditioning tool, not a height-increasing treatment. That distinction matters more than it might seem.
Which Exercises Are Better Than Burpees for Height Growth?
Can Jumping, Swimming, or Hanging Increase Height?
None of them can, at least not in any way that’s been proven. Jumping and other weight-bearing activities can support bone strength during development, but that’s different from adding inches. Swimming builds solid aerobic fitness, yet there’s no evidence it stretches bones, and hanging mostly builds grip strength and shoulder mobility rather than height.
Which Exercises Support Healthy Bone Development?
Weight-bearing movement in general, not any single exercise, is what supports bone density during childhood and the teen years. The table below lays out how burpees stack up against other popular options.
| Exercise | Main benefit | Proven permanent height gain? |
|---|---|---|
| Burpees | Full-body conditioning | No |
| Jumping | Bone-loading stimulus | No |
| Swimming | Aerobic fitness | No |
| Hanging | Grip strength and mobility | No |
Notice the pattern across every row. The benefits differ, but the “proven height gain” column reads the same way straight down the list, because none of these exercises has ever been shown to add adult height.
What Actually Helps You Reach Your Natural Height Potential?
How Do Sleep, Nutrition, and Genetics Affect Height?
Genetics set the upper range for your height, and nutrition, sleep, and hormone function determine how close you get to it. Getting enough calcium, protein, and vitamin D matters for bone development, per the NIH’s guidance on calcium intake. For teenagers, the CDC recommends 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night, since growth hormone release peaks during deep sleep.
What Daily Routine Supports Healthy Growth?
A realistic routine beats any single magic exercise. The CDC recommends 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous activity daily for kids and teens, paired with balanced meals and consistent sleep.
To support normal height development:
- Eat enough nutritious food for your age and activity level.
- Get age-appropriate sleep.
- Exercise regularly using a mix of activities.
- Allow real recovery between tough workouts.
- Track growth with a pediatrician if anything seems off.
No routine adds height beyond what your genetics and growth plates allow. For strategies that actually touch on long-term growth potential, grow taller naturally covers the full picture beyond any single exercise.
The Bottom Line
Burpees are a genuinely useful conditioning exercise, but they won’t change your skeletal height. What actually shapes your final height is genetics, nutrition, sleep, and the timing of puberty, not reps or sets. If growth seems unusually slow or height percentiles drop noticeably, a pediatrician is the right person to check in with.
FAQ
Should you do burpees before breakfast or after eating?
Either can work. Pick a time when you feel energetic, and skip intense burpees right after a large meal if it causes nausea.
Can overweight beginners do burpees safely?
Many can start with low-impact, step-back burpees that skip the jump and push-up. A stable elevated surface can reduce the difficulty while joints adjust.
Do you need shoes when performing burpees?
Supportive athletic shoes help with comfort and traction, especially on hard floors. A stable, nonslip surface matters just as much.
Can girls and boys follow the same burpee routine?
Yes. Both can use the same basic movement, with reps and difficulty adjusted to fitness level and recovery needs.
How long should you rest between burpee sets?
Sixty to ninety seconds is a reasonable starting point, adjusted based on breathing and fatigue. It’s a practical guideline, not a height-growth formula.
When should parents worry about a teenager’s height?
A pediatrician visit makes sense if growth slows unexpectedly, height percentiles drop substantially, or puberty looks unusually early or delayed. A clinician can review growth history and decide if testing is needed.
Jay Lauer is a health researcher with 15+ years specializing in bone development and growth nutrition. He holds a B.S. in Kinesiology and is a certified health coach (ACE). As lead author at HowToGrowTaller.com, Jay has published 300+ evidence-based articles, citing sources from PubMed and NIH. He regularly reviews and updates content to reflect the latest clinical research.