Try This Military Fitness Workout to Improve Leg Strength and Endurance

Leg days in military preparation training require two components: strength training with weights and movement training with weights, also known as load bearing.

The methods below show workouts that involve running on hills, stairs or bleachers; heavy load bearing with a person, also known as a fireman carry; walking or running with a sandbag; and sprint intervals. Finally, two classic ways to top off a leg day are to select swimming with fins or rucking with a backpack.

Warm-Up

Warm up with squats mixed into a jog pyramid 1-10 (stop at 10) with 100-meter runs in between. This warm-up process yields 1,000 meters of jogging and 55 squats to prepare your body for what is to follow. After the warm-up, check your pace and do a 1.5-mile timed run. Mark your time.

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This warm up takes our local training group about two miles away from our starting point, where we encounter a large hill that we can run up in 90 seconds to 2 minutes at a fast pace. Repeat running a hill, stairs, bleachers or a maxed-out incline on a treadmill for two minutes. The goal is to make running harder than on flat ground. If you don't have this type of setup or hills available, you can replicate this workout in a gym on a treadmill, stair-stepper or stationary bike.

Load Bearing

This section requires walking and carrying either a person of similar body weight for 100 meters or finding a moderately heavy sandbag and chest-carrying it for 200 meters.

Repeat this circuit six times:

• Run two minutes fast (hills or a bike set at high levels).
• Fireman's carry for 100 meters or sandbag chest carry walk for 200 meters.
• Recover by walking two minutes.

Speed and Endurance

The next part of the workout is about adding speed and endurance. On our way back to our starting point, we run fast for three telephone poles (roughly 100 meters), followed by an easy three poles and a slow jog to recover. This is right at two miles. You can also do this on a football field or parking lot by running back and forth for 20 sets. This is difficult to do on a treadmill, but you could replicate it on a bike with a version of a Tabata interval (10-second sprints, then 20 seconds easy).

Repeat 20 times.

• Run 100 meters fast.
• Run 100 meters easy.
• Try to make the fast sets progressively faster for the last 10 sets.

For this session, remember to cool down with a gentle activity, such as biking, rowing, using an elliptical machine or walking for 10 minutes, then stretch for 10 minutes.

Later: Swim or Ruck, Depending on Your Goals

Top off your leg day with a ruck or a swim. If you must do both in your future training, pick the one you need to work on the most today and make up the other later in the week.

• Swim a 500-meter warm-up with no fins and tread for five minutes with no hands.
• Swim 2,000 meters with fins for time.
• Cooldown with a 10-minute tread or aqua jogging.

Or

• Ruck four miles with 40-50 pounds.
• Cooldown with 10 minutes on the bike or elliptical machine.
• Stretch or foam-roll for five to 10 minutes.

As you can see, preparing for a training program with a high attrition rate, such as special operations programming, infantry training and other aggressive warfighter programs, requires a combination of strength for load-bearing durability and endurance in multiple modes (run, ruck, swim). Find the time to prepare, and you will be ready for these types of challenges.

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