Boost your Reps Without Breaking: My Go-To Method for Muscular Endurance

What is muscular endurance and why is it important?

When it comes to fitness competitions like Hyrox, CrossFit, or even triathlons, muscular endurance can be the difference between holding pace and falling apart halfway through. Simply put, muscular endurance is your muscles’ ability to keep working under fatigue, repeating the same movement over and over without giving out. Whether it’s an endless hill climb, high-rep lunges, or a brutal set of wall balls at the end of a long workout, if your muscles can’t keep going, neither can you. That’s why improving muscular endurance is one of the most important things you can train for if you're serious about performance.

I want to share a method I’ve been using to seriously increase how many reps I can do without having to stop. This works really well for movements like wall balls, lunges, and sleds, so if you’re training for Hyrox, CrossFit, or any high-volume competition, keep reading.

Where I Learned It

I first came across this method from Chris Hinshaw. Chris is a renowned endurance coach and former professional triathlete, celebrated for his expertise in developing aerobic capacity in the highest level crossfit athletes. I've used it in my own training for many years now and it's become a staple in my programs.

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What is the method?

It's simple when you can't do anymore don't stop, instead adjust the intensity. It's all about using active movement to clear fatigue.

What’s Actually Happening in Your Body?

Here’s the basic idea: when you start an exercise, your body uses a sets of muscle fibers to meet the demand. As those fibers get tired, your body recruits a new group of fibers. This process keeps repeating until you eventually cycle back to the original fibers. If those haven’t recovered yet, you cannot keep going at the same rate. Now these sets of fibres can be made up of fast twitch or slow twitch (it is somewhat genetic but very trainable). Without going too deep fast twitch fibres are used when the demands of the exercise are high they have a fast contraction speed but fatigue quickly, slow twitch fibres are the opposite they are slower but more resistant to fatigue.

The Common mistake

The most common mistake people make when trying to improve their musclular endurance is training until failiure and then taking complete rest. What is happening here is your body is recruiting primarly fast twitch muscle fibres to meet the demands of the exercise and once they are exhausted you stop and wait for them to recover again, before doing another set and using the same fibres again. Over time the load may get relatively easier but its unefficient because you aren't using all of your muscle fibres. The fast twitch fibres become very capable but the slow twitch fibres are undertrained.

In high-rep events like Hyrox, you need to rely on slow twitch fibres as well . The sweet spot is training your body to recover during the workout.

How Do You Train That?

Instead of collapsing between sets or catching your breath on the floor, the idea is to keep moving, just at a much lower intensity. That movement encourages your body to become more efficient at clearing fatigue and recycling muscle fibers.

Chris Hinshaw talks about doing this with movements that mimic the working set. For example pairing hard ski erg intervals with easy swim intervals. I have used it pairing wall balls with slow air squats. It’s all about keeping the movement pattern similar but dropping the intensity.

Here’s What It Looks Like in Practice

Let me break down one of my recent workouts using this method:

Lunges

• Working Set: Barbell lunges 4 sets of 14 reps heavier than competition weight.

• Active Recovery: 90 seconds on the C2 bike

  • Go slow, with resistance (damper at 10). You could also use an Assault Bike (just legs) or stair machine.

• Working Set: Sandbag walking lunges 3 sets of 24 at competiton weight (30kg sandbag)

• Same Recovery: 90 seconds on the bike in between

  Repeat for 3 sets, going as fast as possible on the lunges and sticking to a steady pace on the bike

Wall Balls

I structured this as an EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute):

6 minutes

10-20 wall balls every minute on the minute, after the set for the remaining time complete slow air squats. Adjust the reps and weight depending on your ability but the key is to keep working for the whole 6 minutes.

The reps push you to the limit, and the clock keeps you honest. If it weren’t for the EMOM format, I’d definitely take longer breaks. That’s part of what makes this so effective you’re training to recover without stopping.

Progress It Over Time

Start with something manageable you could do a set every 2 minutes. Then gradually increase the working reps and decrease the recovery reps or you could increase the total time. Over time, you’ll be able to handle bigger unbroken sets with less rest.

You can apply this method to lots of exercises:

• Sled push followed by a power walk

• Push-ups followed by light floor press

• Sled Pull followed by light row erg intervals

Get started

I’ve had a lot of success with this, which is why I integrated it into my Hyrox RaceReady Plan. If you’re looking to improve your endurance, hit more reps unbroken, and build race-day confidence, this plan has you covered. I walk you through everything—workout breakdowns, video demos, and progression strategies.

If you liked this breakdown, feel free to share it, and reach out to me on Instagram @woodsyworkout for more training tips. Until next time peace!