Building the engine in your legs | Strength & Cardiovascular Endurance

Much of Crossfit involves a combination of both muscular power and endurance in the legs. Athletes need to be able to hit heavy weights, but also hit them reliably and repeatedly under different conditions. Because of this, strength and conditioning is a huge part of Crossfit and athletes will often do targeted workouts to increase muscle hypertrophy and performance.

The most famous leg-based movement is the squat. Whether you are doing cleans, snatch, deadlifts, burpees, box jumps, lunges, or even running, the squat will help to develop your explosive power to help you push yourself. Back squat or front squat, it will develop your core stability and your leg drive, and is a foundation movement in weightlifting.

But to build cardiovascular endurance in the legs, with strength, you need to vary the workout. Simply doing sets of back squat along traditional bodybuilding guidelines will build strength, but will not reliably build stamina in the legs to cope with longer workouts, and even competitions.

You can switch up your training by incorporating weighted lunges, overhead lunges, goblet squats, assault bike rounds, and even thrusters. If you are using a weighted tactical vest, you can increase your reps wherein you won’t be relying on your grip on a dumbbell or kettlebell throughout lunges and goblet squats. This means that you can keep the pressure and the burn on your legs longer, without bailing for grip. Weighted lunges will also assist with your core stability, as it is a somewhat technical movement, and this will help you in all realms of Crossfit.

Shuttle runs in your weighted vest, or even the bleep test, will help to build explosive power too, and help to drill different motor patterns so that you can adapt your strength to more varied Crossfit workouts: rather than just being really strong in the squat movement.

One example workout is as follows:

For Time:
5 Rounds for time (Wear a tactical vest)

5 Goblet Squat (32/24kg)
10 Weighted Lunges (Each leg)
15 Cal Assault Bike
20 Wallballs
25 Air Squat

If you’re serious about building power and capacity in your legs, give that a go and tell us your time! You can get more training tips and workout ideas from our Instagram, @Beyondrxgear – good luck!