Tough Mudder Training Plan: 4 Moves for Mastering the Tough Mudder

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When creating a Tough Mudder training plan there is no way to know exactly what types of challenges you need to prepare for.

Regardless of the obstacle in your path, properly training total body strength and fitness will help you blow through barriers and past other racers. You can count on encountering a variety of tests that require upper body strength, balance, cardio conditioning, and athleticism. Here’s how you can improve those skills with 4 moves that will transform your fitness and performance for the ultimate Tough Mudder Training plan.

The only thing that will give you comfort when you come face-to-face with a barrier wall or set of monkey bars is the fact that you did countless pull-ups during your training. Pull ups are quite possibly the best upper body strength training exercise; calling the back, chest, shoulders, arms and core into action.

To get started, hang from a pull-up bar with your hands about shoulder width apart and your palms facing away from your body. Engage your core and back to pull yourself towards your hands so your chin is at or above the bar. To complete the exercise slowly lower yourself back to the hanging position.

If you are unable to perform a pull up, make strengthening the muscles of your upper body a priority. Begin with the inverted row, plank row, lat pull-down and assisted pull-up first before progressing to the pull-up.

Or, what you get when you combine a front squat with an overhead press. For training purposes, the thruster can and should be done with dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, a medicine ball or a sandbag.

To perform a thruster, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and the weight racked at the chest. Drive the chest up, engage the lats and core. Looking straight ahead, sit back into a squat. At the bottom of the squat exhale and then drive off the heels and through the hips. As you rise out of the squat, begin to push the weight overhead into a military press. End with your arms locked out overhead, then lower the weight back down to shoulder height and repeat.

How can you build strength and max out your heart rate without any equipment? That’s easy; do some burpees. The burpee is a torturous, total body exercise that will fatigue all of the major muscle groups, while training cardiovascular endurance.

Starting in the standing position, squat down, place your hands on the ground outside your feet, then kick both feet out behind you. At this point you are in the push-up position. Take your chest to the ground at the bottom of a push-up, then press up from the bottom of the push-up and return the feet to the hands. Return to standing by jumping off the ground, clapping hands overhead

This one is kinda a no brainer. Using a kettlebell you can train strength and cardiovascular fitness in one workout. Build explosive power training the body as one unit during compound and functional exercises like the two hand swing.

Keep in mind the legs and hips, not the arms or upper body are used to propel the kettlebell through the swing. Power is created by driving through the heels, using the large muscles of the lower body including the quads, glutes, hamstrings and core.

Begin in a standing position with feet shoulder width apart, chest up, shoulders back and down, core flexed, back arched (not rounded) with a slight knee bend, and weight distributed to the heels of your feet.

Grip the kettlebell with both hands over top of the handle.

Sink into a squat with the weight between the legs. Keep the torso upright, the abs braced and the arms loose. At the bottom of the movement shift your weight back onto your heels.

Standing up from the squatted position, use your hips to propel the weight to hip level.

Engaging the hips and core, swing the weight up higher until you reach shoulder level. Focus on using your hips and legs to move the weight, rather than your arms.

Now that you know the 4 moves for mastering the Tough Mudder , create a training plan that features these exercises. Use this workout as a template for other challenging training sessions.

15-1 of each*

Burpee

Pull-up

Thruster

Kettlebell Swing

*perform 15x each exercise before moving to 14,13,12…..1

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