Iron Legs

This workout plan has been growing, occasionally with conscious additions and reconstruction but primarily in the recess of my intuitive background processes, and I’d like to document it in it’s current state and give you the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon before I even give myself a chance to rock this. If my experience and intuition serves me right, this workout will not only be extremely effective in developing you all around for everything from explosive movements to high weight or extended duration endurance as well as being a healthy, balanced approach to developing absurdly tight, functional legs.

Who for?
This workout is an ideal gym diversion for any mixed art or mobile athlete: tricking, parkour, free running, mma, ju jitsu, dancers, ravers, hike sprinters, gymnasts, circus freaks, body geeks, and anyone who wants freakishly strong, sexy legs.

Basic Structure
1. Squats: Warm Up and Heavy 3 x 3RM
2. Jumps: Box Jumps (and Jump Rope)
3. Legs: Leg Circuits: Step Ups, Standing Calves, Lunges, Seated Calves
4. Cardio: Jump Rope, Bike, Running

Introduction
Warm up with three minutes of walking, jogging, bike or whatever you prefer then get to a rack and lose your shoes. You’re warm up does not end here; your life is a warm up: continue to move and stretch and address any issues, tight spots or pain, throughout the workout and throughout your daily life. Tired is no excuse to skip this workout; the only permissible excuses for skipping this or any part of this workout are pain or an honest intuitive prediction of unsafety based on a well-developed understanding of your body and minds capacity for this adventure.

3RM Squats
Start with the bar and warm into deep back squat movement patterns without wasting your energy with significant reps for these low percentage max sets. Don’t even write this stuff down; just focus on safe, healthy, effective preparation for your 3 rep max (3RM) sets. Further, we’re not bodybuilders or power lifters so stretch; if you’re not moving the weight, you should be stretching or drinking water or flirting, never standing or sitting around getting tight. When you’re ready to safely destroy yourself, load the bar with your 3RM and scare every meathead in the gym with a few uninhibited, screaming-effort, neck-popping break-parallel back squats. Don’t forget to lockout and breath between screams.

Work up to 3 sets of your 3RM. If you can’t bang out 3 sets of 3RM at this weight, no problem; lower the weight accordingly for 3 3RM sets. You should be exhausted and near vomit already, but continue to stretch and ready yourself between sets for the coming box jumps.

Box Jumps
After the 3 sets of 3RM squats, it’s time for box jumps. Find a box near the top of your vertical for max effort jumps. Save your knees: jump up and onto the box but step lightly down from the box. Jump up, step down, repeat until your pace slows significantly and record the height and number of jumps. Repeat this two more times but drop the height a bit each time. Next time, use the same heights but try to get to and beat your number from before as quickly as possible. Increase the height of the first step when you can do more than 6, the second when you can do more than 12, and the third when you can do more than 20.

Unilateral Work and Calf Raises
Here we’re going to work a set of four low-explosion movements to finish demolishing your legs with a bit of balance and secondary work. We’ll cycle through the following four movements: Step Ups, Standing Calf Raise, Reverse Lunge, Seated Calf Raise. It may be unreasonable to expect even two cycles the first time through, but when super-human is within reach, we’ll want to shoot for 3 cycles.

We’re going to hit the calves standing and sitting because significantly different muscle groups are responsible for either motion. Additionally, we’ll alternate between Step Ups and Reverse Lunges to take advantage of the balance and correctional benefit of the Step Ups with the loadable, hip-opening advantages of the Lunges.

Cardio
This order is just as important as the rest so don’t skip pieces or you’ll be seriously limiting the glowing, disabling benefits of this program. To start, we want to attempt in this order: 10% jump rope, 30% spin or real bike, 60% barefoot running. For example, 6 minutes jump rope, 9 minutes Spin bike, 18 minutes running fits the bid.

Notes:
• If you’ve never barefoot ran before, start at 1 minute, honestly, and never increase by more than 10% each week unless 10% is less than 1 minute, in which case you can increase by 1 minute.
• Do not increase the running time beyond 20 minutes unless you’re training specifically for foot races; feel free to continue to increase the jump rope and especially the biking time.
• I wouldn’t recommend jumping rope for more than 2 x 5 minutes, but biking is acceptable up into the 2-3 hour range.

Warm Down
Your warm down should be pure agonizing bliss, high on endorphins, giggling at the fact that you can’t move, pissed at the fact that your legs won’t stop shaking, and marveling at how entirely unable you are to convince yourself to do anything but lay like an awkward puddle spread half between a yoga mat and a foam roller. Move and stretching everything you have left with everything you have left and congratulate yourself for being awesome. Stretching at this point should be mostly for the sake of reflection and meditation; maintenance stretching should have been performed during warm ups and throughout the workout. Continue to stretch and drink plenty of water throughout the day. And I don’t care what diet you’re on, consume carbohydrates and protein immediately.

Summary
1. Warm Up
2. Squats 3 x 3RM
3. Box Jumps: 6 x high, 12 x medium, 20 x low
4. Leg Circuit: Step Ups, Standing Calf Raises, Reverse Lunges, Seated Calf Raises
5. Jump Rope
6. Biking
7. Running
8. Warm Down

Frequency
Bang this out twice a week and work up to an intensity that permits only a few workouts per month. Replace every fifth workout with low-impact swimming and machines for all of the isolated machine movements we’ve skipped: glutes, hamstrings, quads, adductors, abductors and anything else that needs some attention.

Furthermore
If this ever gets easy, a minor adjustment to the repetition prescriptions and cardio choices should incite you to new heights of hell. If your tendons can handle the additional stress and you don’t mind completely demolishing your potential for muscle growth, hop into a low-intensity yoga session following this workout. If you’re at the gym for more than an hour, you should be eating and drinking the whole way through your workout and be sure you’re fully loaded going into the mess in the first place.

When I perfect this workout I’ll write a follow-up article and put a link to it here. =)