These workouts are designed to blast every muscle in your lower body from your calves to your glutes, giving you the beefiest foundation possible to support the rest of your training regimen. And because many of them built around timed intervals—as CrossFit WODs tend to be—you’ll be able to build muscle, burn fat, and increase your cardio ability at the same time.
These are our five favorite CrossFit workouts focused on building lower-body muscle.
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Slow Squats
4 rounds of the following:
Part 1: 6 tempo barbell back squats Weight: 60% of your 1-rep maximum Tempo: 2 seconds down, 2 seconds up Rest 10 seconds
As the name implies, you’ll need a staircase to do this workout. Do three rounds of the following:
On the way up the stairs:
Single leg hops “RIGHT leg jumps with left leg straight” (one step at a time)
Single leg hops “LEFT leg jumps with left leg straight” (one step at a time)
Frog jumps (2-3 steps per jump)
Fast feet
At the top of the stairs:
15 Pushups
15 Air Squats
15 Situps
Jog back down.
This workout comes from Beau Whitman, a former gymnast and current CrossFit and track and field coach. For the frog jumps, you want to mimic the position you squat in, so make sure your form is on point.
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Barbell Barbarian
Every minute on the minute (EMOM) for 10 minutes, do:
1 Deadlift 1 Hang Clean 1 Front Squat
Use 60% of your one-rep maximum for each exercise.
Cole Sager, a four-time CrossFit Games competitor, suggests this EMOM, which focuses on building power and muscular endurance in your legs. Again, form is vital here, especially in the later rounds, so if you need to, scale down the weight.
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The 24th Rep
8 sets* of 3 back squats at 85% (or above) of your one-rep max
*If you fail a rep, lower the weight and/or stop the workout.
“Heavy weight done in low reps serves as high intensity and the best way to build strength,” says Ray Cooney, the head coach at Sopris CrossFit in Carbondale, CO. If you do CrossFit regularly, you may be tempted to move as quickly as possible, but that’s not the point of this workout, so relax and take your time. The entire set should feel like a nine out of 10 on the difficulty scale.
“This workout will help you build lean, strong, balanced legs,” says Ryan McCarthy, a rowing and CrossFit coach at Bowery CrossFit in New York City. “Because we usually do movements (like conventional back and front squats) with both feet planted, we can hide side-to-side or muscle-group weakness. Not here! Both the single-leg RDL and the split squat will challenge your big muscles, your core and your stabilizing muscles.”
