I Want to Share this Leg Workout to Runners
This has improved my muscular endurance, calf strength & overall speed — let’s deep dive.
Intro
Hey all, for all those new here, my name’s Leon and I’m training for a 10km race on Sunday 23rd October (couple of days to go!). I have a series on here called “Road to 10k” where I document my progress week by week. This leg workout has helped me dramatically — and I think it’ll help you too if the goal is:
Increased muscular endurance, calf strength & speed.
On this post, I’ll be putting on my Personal Trainer hat and analysing what’s going on here & why you may want to incorporate it in your training.
General
Basic information on the plan.
Duration:
- 55mins — 1hr
Difficulty:
- Intermediate — advanced
Target muscles:
- Quadriceps | Hamstrings | Calves | Glutes
Goal/outcome:
- Increased muscular endurance in the legs
- Increased Calf strength
- Increased overall speed
Equipment
All you need is a pair of Dumbbells, Bench or Step.
Benefits:
- ️Minimum equipment/fuss — You stay in one place for the entire workout.
- Suitable for Home/Gym — The minimum equipment makes it suitable for an home/gym environment.
- No machines needed — Not required for the main routine. If you want to throw in machines, do it after.
- Free weights promote functional fitness — You utilise more muscles according to HealthLine [1]
The Plan
There’s 8 moves which will target the lower body effectively (with the equipment available)
Exercises:
1 — Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift
5 — Dumbbell Forward Lunge (One Side)
6 — Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat
If you have Twitter, this thread is the original tweet which shows all the exercises.
On the last tweet, there’s a link to the workout [2] — so you can download & try from yourself. Now, let’s deep dive people!
The structure:
Each section consists of 3 exercises which we repeat x2. The final exercise of each section will be 2 sets of calf raises — I wanted to give you a pattern.
Pre exhaust technique — “Basically, by performing an isolation movement to pre-exhaust muscles needed for a compound” [3]
Example: Leg extensions to squats
Section 1 — we follow a pre-exhaust technique with the Single Leg Romanian Deadlift (SLRDL) followed by a DB Squat (Racked). Why is the Squat Racked? It helps you stay upright.
Sections 2/3 — we isolate each leg and focus on the quads/hamstrings (1 set for each side x 14–16 reps). This is then followed by calf raises. During my last workout, I did the calf raises on weighted plates for extra range of motion. The main workout is done, but if you’re feeling up to it, theres a bonus.
Bonus Round — To tie it all together, we end with 2 compound movements followed by — you guessed it, calf raises.
Now, if you do 14 reps of each exercise (more on that below) here’s how those numbers add up:
- Single Leg Romanian Deadlift (SLRDL) | 56
- Squats | 42
- Calf Raises | 224
- Split Squats | 56
- Forward Lunge (One Side) | 56
- Bulgarian Split Squats | 56
- Reverse Lunges | 56
- Deadlifts | 14
Total | 560 reps!
Speaking of rep ranges…
Rep ranges
I specifically didn’t talk about rep ranges in the beginning because this can be flexible based on your goals. As we want to increase muscular endurance here’s how you do it:
Our rep range is 14–16 reps with 30–60s rest
For those who don’t know their one rep max (1RM)
- Pick an exercise (e.g. squat) and start with a light weight.
- You should feel the ‘burn’ around about the 12/13th rep. If you feel it before, drop the weight. If you don’t feel it until the 17th, up the weight.
- Take a short rest in between (e.g. 1min)
For all those who know their one rep max (1RM)
- Pick a weight <67% of 1RM.
Take a look at this diagram from Storm Fitness Academy [4]. This blog explains 1RM which is worth the read.
Note: You can make this into a muscle building workout for increased mass/size (hypertrophy). Here’s how you do it.
- Change the rep ranges to 8–12reps.
- You should feel the ‘burn’ on the 9/10th rep.
- Your rest periods should be about 90–120s.
I’d like to point out things aren’t necessarily black & white with rep ranges. I found this blog by AJPerformance [5] which goes into more detail about this. I’ll link it down below in the resources.
Beat last weeks targets
Week by week you’ll get stronger so the weights & reps will need to be readjusted. Here’s an example:
Week 1 | Squat — 14 reps x 12kg
Week 2 | Squat — 15 reps x 12kg
Week 3 | Squat — 14 reps x 14kg
Listen to your body — play it by ear.
My results:
This Google Sheet [6] shows my running progress after incorporating this routine. My rate of perceived effort (RPE) ranges from 5–8 but my pace has gotten quicker.
Give your body enough time to recover:
Personally, I’ve done this twice during the 6 week build up to the race. Partly because during my weekly runs I’d experience leg endurance issues — so I adjusted my training.
Here’s some tips to a speedy recovery:
- Consume good quality protein/fats/carbs* — to rebuild muscle & fuel the body.
- Hot baths — to help with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
- Stretch after the workout* — to prevent injury.
Here’s some bonus tips:
- Visualise yourself *enjoying* the workout before it happens — can’t explain it but I feel way more focussed/on task if I do this for 2 minutes.
- If you’re doing this in the gym, grab the bench and put a water bottle on it to reserve. Get your weights (pair of dumbbells & 2 weighted plates for calf raises). You won’t move from this position.
- I did a run mid week (Tuesday/Weds) then the Leg workout Saturday. It’s entirely up to you but this gave my legs time to recover.
- Throw in some knee mobility work such as the Poliquin Step Up — I’ve had knee problems and this has helped!
- For hip flexors, the Mini Band Runner Extension is great.
- I paired this leg routine with a functional-style workout to test my overall fitness. I noticed the increased hip mobility/endurance when doing Kettlebell swings.
Final Thoughts:
This leg workout has clearly helped me prepare for my race. I’d like to hear if it’s helped you as much as me. Hope you’ve found this useful — you’ve got new resources to add to your routine.
If you found this useful download the full plan here for free.
Here’s a list of the resources used
