How to prepare for a full-body fitness challenge

Popular full-body fitness challenges like Tough Mudder and Born Survivor aren’t for the faint-hearted. With every muscle in your body working to get you around the course, prepping correctly for your challenge is crucial for ensuring maximum endurance, speed and strength on these physically exerting courses.

Whichever full-body challenge you choose, you’ll need to make sure that your body is ready to take on everything the event throws at you. That means you’ll need to have high cardiovascular fitness levels and muscle strength to help you get through both the strength and cardio obstacles.

So are you up for the challenge? No matter what your fitness level is, our detailed workout and diet regime will help ensure you’re at your best on the big day.

Strength training

To prepare your body for a full-body fitness challenge, you need to get to work on a regime that can hit every core muscle group in your body – both upper and lower. Some routines are harder than others, but we’ve put together a nice little workout for you below to help:

1. Burpees
2. Mountain climbers
3. Kettlebell swings
4. Squat thrusts
5. Box jumps
6. Medicine ball slam
7. Pull-ups
8. Leg presses

At the beginning of your training schedule, start off slowly. Choose a few of these exercises to focus on at a time start with 5 rounds of 10-20 repetitions with 60 seconds rest. Over the space of the weeks you’re training, build these exercises up and increase your repetitions.

Cardio

Typically, you’ll have to cover several miles with these full-body fitness challenges so building your cardio is crucial. We recommend treadmill training at the gym alternated with outdoor running to ensure your body is adjusted to different terrains and conditions. High-Intensity Interval Training (or HIIT) workouts are a great way to train for the stop-start nature of full-body fitness challenges, helping you improve your endurance and prepare for getting over the obstacles on the course.

As with muscle training, you should increase your distance week by week. Your ultimate distance goal will depend on the distance of the challenge you choose. Whether this is your first challenge or you’re a seasoned professional, the aim isn’t to beat others but rather do it at your own pace.

Diet

Your diet in the weeks preparing for your challenge is essential to enabling your body to best recover and improve your performance on the course. Your meal plans should include plenty of complex carbohydrates, such as whole wheat bread and pasta for slow release energy that gives the body enough fuel to work. You’ll also need a protein rich diet with foods such as lean meat, cheese, natural yoghurt or handy protein shakes to help your muscles grow and repair after your challenging workouts!

With a mix of cardio and strength training with our equipment, you can ensure your body is properly prepared for making your way around these grueling courses. In the weeks leading up to your challenge, building up your muscle strength and endurance is crucial to tackling both the distance and obstacles you’ll encounter.

Need help preparing for a full-body fitness challenge? Maybe you’re training for a Mud Run or marathon? Find your nearest PureGym today!