My guess is you hate cardio. Most people do. Spending an hour on a treadmill staring at a wall zaps your soul and can so boring most people refuse to do it. But you know you need conditioning.
This is why we started Warrior Cardio.
This is not a polite jog through the park. It is a brutal, relentless finisher designed to build solid legs a mind that simply refuses to quit. It also burns serious calories.
Here is how it works: At the end of every single workout or on your non-lifting days, you will perform 15 to 20 minutes of continuous bodyweight squats, walking lunges, or sled pushes.
What Exactly is the Warrior Cardio Challenge?
The rules are incredibly simple. Finish your normal training session. Then, set a timer for 15 to 20 minutes. For the duration of that timer, you will perform either deep bodyweight squats, walking lunges, or sled pushes.
You can alternate back and forth between them for the 20 minutes, or just pick one and go with it for the entire time. Either way, you have to do one of these three exercises for the full duration of the session.
You can pause to catch your breath when the burn becomes unbearable, but the clock keeps ticking. The goal is to get as many reps in as you can within the time frame. You are accumulating hundreds of reps while your heart rate redlines and your legs scream for mercy. It's super fun.
Why You Need to Do This
Adding 15 to 20 minutes of continuous lower body movement sounds like a recipe for overtraining to the uninitiated. But the human body is incredibly adaptable. When you push past the initial shock, the benefits are nothing short of transformative. After a few sessions you will notice a huge increase in the endurance of your legs.
Your legs are loaded with endurance muscles, so you have to hit them with high volume.
You might be sore after the first session, so we recommend at least 48 hours between sessions.
Elite Work Capacity and Endurance
Traditional cardio relies on low-impact, repetitive mechanics. Warrior Cardio forces your largest muscle groups to contract dynamically while under deep fatigue. This skyrockets your heart rate and forces your cardiovascular system to adapt rapidly. It also provides a huge stimulus for your legs to grow.
Within two weeks of this challenge, you will notice a massive shift in your standard workouts. You will recover faster between heavy sets. You will no longer gas out on high-rep sets of deadlifts or rows.
Plus, your engine for your regular life will become massive.
Enhanced Active Recovery
It sounds counterintuitive, but high-rep, unweighted movement actually speeds up recovery. Heavy lifting breaks down muscle tissue and leaves metabolic waste in the area. Sitting on the couch does nothing to clear it out.
Bodyweight squats and lunges pump massive amounts of nutrient-rich blood into your hips, glutes, quads, and hamstrings. This flush effect acts as a lubricant for your joints and clears out the junk left behind from heavy training. You will find that your legs actually feel fresher and more mobile the day after a grueling session.
If you choose sled pushes pick a weight that provides resistance, but does not feel like pushing a car.
If you don't want to finish your workouts with these sessions, they can easily be added in between workouts.
Serious Lower Body Hypertrophy
Time under tension builds muscle. When you perform 15 minutes of continuous squats, your legs spend a massive amount of time under tension. You are hitting the slow-twitch muscle fibers that your heavy sets of five reps barely touch.
This challenge forces massive blood pooling, creating extreme cellular swelling. That metabolic stress is a primary driver of hypertrophy. Do not be surprised if your jeans start fitting a lot tighter around the thighs after a month of this protocol.
How to Survive and Thrive
Jumping straight into 20 minutes of walking lunges after a heavy leg day might leave you crawling to your car. You need a strategy to survive and conquer this challenge.
First, pace yourself. This is not a sprint. The goal is continuous movement, not explosive speed. Find a rhythm and stick to it. Resting as much and as often as needed. Just don't rest for more than 30 seconds at a time.
Get Started
If you want to see huge increases in muscular endurance, burn fat, and get your legs ready for the beach, get started today.
