Royal Huddleston Burpee

Royal Huddleston Burpee, Sr. (June 4, 1898 – January 13, 1987) was an American physiologist. He is best known for the full-body exercise named after him, the Burpee.

Burpee was a veteran of the First World War. After the war, he earned his doctorate in physiology at Columbia University.[1] In the 1930s, he developed the Burpee test.[2] In 1942, the U.S. Army adopted the exercise as part of its physical fitness test.[3][4]

During World War II, he worked as the overseas program director for the United Service Organizations (USO). From 1946 to 1964, Burpee served as Executive Director of the Bronx-Union Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in New York City.

Key publications

  • Burpee, Royal Huddleston (1940). Seven quickly administered tests of physical capacity. Contributions to Education. Vol. 818. Teachers College, University of Columbia.[5]
  • Burpee, Royal Huddleston (1972). Seven quickly administered tests of physical capacity and their use in detecting physical incapacity for motor activity in men and boys. New York: AMS Press. ISBN 9780404558185.

References

  1. ^ Tamarkin, Sally (2014-05-02). "A Brief History Of The Burpee". Huffpost. Archived from the original on 2025-06-14. Retrieved 2025-06-14.
  2. ^ "definition of burpee from Oxford Dictionaries Online". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17.
  3. ^ "Effektive Ganzkörperübung Burpee: Liegestütze mit Flugphase [Effective full-body exercise Burpee: Push-ups with flight phase]". Spiegel Online. 2014-08-15. Retrieved 2025-06-14.
  4. ^ Knapik, Joseph J.; East, Whitfield B. (2014). "History of United States Army physical fitness and physical readiness training". U.S. Army Medical Department Journal: 5–19. ISSN 1524-0436. PMID 24706237.
  5. ^ Cowell, Charles C. (1942). "Review of Seven Quickly Administered Tests of Physical Capacity". Educational Research Bulletin. 21 (7): 213–214. ISSN 1555-4023. JSTOR 1474211.