How to Build Spartan Race-Ready Strength and Fitness at Home

Training for a Spartan Race is no joke, not if you’re serious about giving it everything you’ve got. But getting down to an obstacle course every day, or even every weekend, often isn’t viable. You need to keep up your training on a daily basis, building strength and conditioning with as wide a variety of movements as possible — to challenge yourself is the name of the game, and just like the Spartan Race itself, how you train is a moving, creative process. Life won’t always be on your side when it comes to convenience and proper access to exactly the kind of equipment and terrain you’re looking for. So, what’s to be done?

How do you train at home, keeping your strength and cardiovascular conditioning up, so that when the time comes you can smash your Spartan Race? We’ve got plenty of tips for just that, and in the article we’ll break down how to get the most out of your own body weight — and if you have a Velites Fire 2.0 on hand, we’ve got ways to work that beauty into your training, too.

An Introduction to Body Weight Training

One of the world’s most effective types of training, is also one of the oldest. Body weight training, also sometimes called calisthenics, has been integral to everyone from the Spartans of ancient Greece, to US Special Operations troops. Think push-ups, planks, dips, squats and lunges – exercises which use your own body weight as a resistance tool, and which can be infinitely scaled to offer more of a challenge as you progress.

CrossFit, TRX suspension training and boot camp courses, all rely in-part on body weight routines, and it’s this type of training you’ll want to focus on when working out at home for your next Spartan Race.

Bodyweight training has been utilized for hundreds of years, but only became well-known — as a defined trend — lately, when gyms and physical fitness professionals repackaged it to appeal to modern tastes — Freeletics is a great example of this.

One of the main reasons people love body weight training, of course, is that it’s free. You don’t need any sort of special or expensive equipment to get started, and no matter where you are, you’re just seconds away from a killer workout. That said, let’s take a look at some of the best at-home workouts to get you Spartan Race ready.

Note: We’ll outline a few of our favourite go-to exercises, then compile them into a week-long routine for you to get started with.

Upper Body Strength Training at Home

How comfortable are you with being upside-down? Push-ups are your friend when it comes to body weight workouts, but we’ve got a few other tricks up our sleeves, too, some of which involve standing on your head for a while. Our favourites include:

• Regular push-ups
• Straight arm plank holds
• Handstand push-ups
• Handstand holds

Lower Body Strength Training at Home

The Spartan Race is a dynamic one, meaning you need to be comfortable moving in all directions with good stability. One of our favourites is the humble body weight lunge, plus:

• Air squats
• Jump lunges
• The aforementioned body weight lunge
• Jump rope (also with Velites handle weights)

Full Body Strength Training at Home

We’re going to assume that you don’t have access to a pull-up bar at home, and instead stick with exercises you can do using just floor, the walls and your jump rope. For full body strength and conditioning, we love:

• Burpees
• Running
• Bear crawl
• Yoga

Yoga? That’s right. For all-over conditioning and bodily awareness, few practices beat yoga. If you can carve out 20-30 minutes a day to stretch and move your body through as wide a range of motions as possible, you’ll see the difference in other areas of your training.

One Week of At-Home Bodyweight Spartan Training

Follow this programme for a week, and if it works for you, come back and give our 30-day Spartan plan a try.

Monday

1 mile run

200 push-ups

100 air squats

1 mile run

Tip: Break the push-ups early so that you don’t blow out and lose time.

Tuesday

PART A

Accumulate 10 minutes total handstand hold

(Every time you drop down, perform 20 double-unders)

PART B

150 burpees for time.

Wednesday

As Many Rounds/Reps as Possible in 20 minutes:

5 push-ups

10 sit-ups

15 air squats

Immediately upon finishing:

Max plank hold (3 rounds)

Thursday

As Many Reps as Possible in 20 minutes

1 handstand push-ups

5 air squats

10 double unders

(add 2 handstand push-ups, 5 double-unders and 5 air squats every round)

Friday

500 reps, split however you want between:

Alternate leg lunges

Push-ups

Air squats

Saturday

60 minutes of low intensity yoga

Note: Try and work yoga into your routine every day, but make a point of getting 60 minutes here.

Sunday

30 minutes of bear crawl and freestyle movement

30 minutes of light jogging

That’s a pretty intense week, but if you can keep it up and repeat the following week with your own variations on the movements mentioned here (or download our free infographic), you’ll be well on your way to increasing both strength and conditioning for your next Spartan.

Give it a try, let us know how it goes, and if you need a jump rope, visit the Velites online shop.

Picture: Reebok