Best Crossfit Workouts for Building Muscle 2024: To Get Shredded Like a CrossFit Pro

Why CrossFitters Should Embrace Hypertrophy Training

Listen up, because building muscle through CrossFit has some fantastic benefits besides just looking freaking awesome:

Blow Past Plateaus Even your smaller muscle groups get crushed during normal WODs. But by directly targeting and strengthening those smaller muscles, you’ll be able to improve your major lifts big time. Weak forearms might be the reason you keep failing at lockout on heavy cleans. Bring up those forearms, and you’ll smoke your old PRs.

Balanced Beefcake A lot of CrossFit movements are bilateral, meaning you use both arms or legs at once. This makes it easy for your dominant side to take over and create muscle imbalances over time. Targeted hypertrophy work will help keep you evenly yoked up and resilient against injuries.

Transition Like a Boss If you’re coming over to CrossFit from other strength sports, hypertrophy training gives you a familiar way to ease into the high-intensity craziness of WODs^[1]. You’ll already be comfortable with straight sets and rep schemes, so embrace the pump while you build up your engine.

Warm it Up Before You Earn Your Stripes

Before any great workout, you need to get your body primed and ready to go with a solid warm-up routine. This is especially true when you’re going to be pulverizing your muscles for maximum hypertrophy.

An effective CrossFit warm-up will open up your mobility, activate your muscles, and get your blood flowing. You’ll want to pay special attention to the specific movement patterns you’ll be using that day. For example, if snatches are on the menu, spend extra time creating awesome hip and shoulder mobility.

Here’s a solid full-body warm-up to get you fired up:

• 3-5 minutes on the air bike at low intensity
• 15-20 band pull-parts
• 60 seconds in the frog stretch
• World’s greatest stretch (6 reps per side)
• Lateral lunges (8 per side)
• Half-kneeling t-spine rotations (8 per side)
• 30 seconds forward bear crawl, 30 seconds reverse
• Crab reaches (8 per side)
• 2-5 ramp-up sets for the main lifts of the day

Don’t sleep on your warm-up! It’s what will allow you to attack your workout with solid technique and energy.

The Best Damn CrossFit Workouts for Building Muscle

Enough of the formalities, let’s get to the good stuff – muscle-building workout after muscle-building workout! Here are some brutal routines carefully crafted to hit each major muscle group:

Upper Body Annihilation 12 Minute AMRAP: 10 Strict Chin-ups 20 Bar Dips

This simple couplet will utterly demolish your biceps, lats, and triceps by the time you’re done. No kipping or bouncing – just you against strict reps for 12 brutal minutes.

Modifications:

• dBand-assisted chin-ups
• Bench dips
• Close-grip push-ups

Leg Day, Every Day 5 Rounds for Time:

• Back Squats
• Front Squats
• Romanian Deadlifts
• 20 Double-Unders

Choose a weight that’s a grind by the final round and get ready for your legs to be thankful it’s over! Sub in goblet squats, dumbbells for the dead, and regular jump rope if needed.

Core Recruitment

21-15-9 Reps of:

• Front Squats
• GHD Sit-ups
• Toes-to-Bar

This classic descending ladder format incinerates your abdominals, obliques, and everything in between. Modify by doing regular sit-ups and knee raises if needed.

Crossfit Workouts for Perfecting Your Technique

Just getting started with CrossFit? No problem! Here are some muscle-building workouts^[2] that are a bit more beginner-friendly while still kicking your butt:

Beginner Burner

3-5 Rounds for Time:

• 40 Ring Rows
• 30 Bulgarian Split Squats (15 per side)
• 20 Box Step-Ups (10 per side)
• 10 Push Presses

This works for all your major muscle groups through fundamental movements, letting you really dial in your technique. Use a counterbalance for the split squats and sub in lighter variations as needed.

Bodyweight & Banging

21-15-9 Reps of:

• Burpee Push-Ups
• Air Squats
• Pike Push-Ups
• Jump Squats

No equipment is required for this tough little chipper! Take out the pushups if needed, eliminate jumping for the squats, and embrace the burn!

How to Program for Maximum Hypertrophy

Phew, that’s a ton of great workouts! But how do you smartly incorporate them into your training? Here are some programming tips:

Give Your Muscles a Break CrossFit is incredibly taxing, so adding more dedicated hypertrophy work needs to be done carefully. Make sure you’re getting sufficient sleep, nutrition, mobility workout, and deloads to allow for proper recovery.

Split It Up

More experienced athletes may struggle to add full hypertrophy sessions. In that case, do your regular WODs, then tack on a 10-15 minute hypertrophy finisher afterward targeting a specific muscle group.

Rotate Through Weaknesses Analyze where you’re struggling during WODs – lockout on Olympic lifts, lack of power off the floor, etc. Then program hypertrophy work that targets those weak links.

Less Is More (at First) If you’re brand new to CrossFit, start by sprinkling in 1-2 hypertrophy sessions per week. Let your body adapt before ramping things up.

One Last Hypertrophy Kick for CrossFit Workouts

Still hungry for more hypertrophy? I got you! Here are some rapid-fire workout ideas to incorporate:

EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) – Complete a set number of reps per minute, alternating work and rest periods. EMOMs are great for density training.

AMRAPs (As Many Reps/Rounds as Possible) – Go all out for a set time frame completing as many rounds/reps of a workout as possible. Huge calorie burn!

Tabatas – 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest, repeated for 8 rounds^[3]. Incredibly intense!

RFT (Rounds for Time) – Complete a certain number of rounds as fast as possible. Simple and effective.

Chippers – “Chip away” at a longer workout with high rep schemes across multiple movements. A real grinder!

Ladders – Work your way up or down a ladder of increasing/decreasing reps. Build mental and physical fortitude!

There you have it – every tool you need to build an insanely muscular physique through CrossFit! Stay consistent, make those gains a priority, and watch your muscles explode. Now get after it!

Don’t Neglect These Muscle-Building Musts

Alright, so you’ve got a library of badass hypertrophy workouts and a plan for programming them into your training. But we can’t just send you off into the gain-making wilderness without covering a few more crucial tips!

Warm-Up Right I know I already hit you with a full warm-up routine, but let me reiterate how important it is to prep your body properly. When you’re trying to push some serious weight and intensity for hypertrophy, the last thing you want is to get derailed by a crappy warm-up.

Take the time to fire up your muscles, groove your movement patterns, and create awesome mobility – especially for the areas you’ll be targeting that day. Your future swole self will thank you.

Recover Like a Champ Look, building muscle is catabolic as hell. You’re literally beating the sh!t out of your body during these hypertrophy sessions. That’s why nailing your recovery^[4] is so damn important.

We’re talking:

• 8+ hours of high-quality sleep per night
• Eating enough protein (0.8-1 gram per pound of body weight)
• Consuming plenty of carbs and healthy fats
• Hydrating properly
• Using lacrosse balls, foam rollers, and stretching
• Taking deload weeks when needed

I don’t care how intense your training is, if your recovery sucks, you’ll just keep spinning your wheels. Treat recovery like a pillar of your programming!

Smart Supplementation for Lean Muscle Gains

To kickstart your clean bulk and pack on slabs of lean muscle, you may also want to incorporate some key supplements:

A Quality Protein Powder Whole food protein sources should be your top priority. But a fast-digesting whey or plant-based protein powder makes it easy to hit your daily protein targets for maximum muscle protein synthesis.

Look for low-calorie, low-carb powders with around 25-30 grams of protein per serving. Mix ’em’ up post-workout for accelerated recovery and growth!

Creatine Monohydrate

This powerhouse Creatine Monohydrate supplement has been scientifically proven to increase lean muscle gains, strength, power output, and exercise capacity. It’s safe, cheap, and incredibly effective.

Simply take 3-5 grams per day, either before or after training. You may experience some initial water retention but stick with it – the results are well worth it.

Citrulline Malate

By increasing nitric oxide production, citrulline malate helps drive more nutrients and oxygen into your working muscles. This leads to better endurance, pumps, and recovery for bigger growth.

Take 6-8 grams pre-workout or intra-workout to truly take your muscle-building WODs to the next level. The right supplements, combined with intense training and intelligent recovery, will truly help you build an insane CrossFit physique!

The Mind/Muscle Connection for Maximum Hypertrophy

You know what they say – muscles don’t grow in the gym, they grow after you leave! While that’s definitely true from a physiological standpoint, there’s another crucial element to maximizing hypertrophy – the mind/muscle connection.

See, when you’re lasered in on the specific muscles you’re working, consciously squeezing and contracting them throughout each rep, you’re able to better activate and fatigue those fibers. More activation = more growth stimulus.

Don’t just mindlessly grind through your hypertrophy workouts. With each movement, visualize the muscles working, focus on the stretch and contraction, and pour everything you’ve got into maximizing the fiber recruitment.

For example, on dumbbell curls, spend your rest periods squeezing and flexing your biceps peaks. During lat pulldowns, imagine ripping the bar apart as you pull it to your body. You get the idea!

Harnessing this mental focus and mind/muscle connection is like injecting maximally anabolic fuel into your training. Sure, you’ll still make gains just going through the motions. But if you want to truly maximize your results, lift with intentionality!

Crank Up The Intensity for Extreme Hypertrophy

Let’s be real – high intensity is the name of the game in CrossFit workouts. Those hugely taxing WODs are exactly what forges such insane levels of fitness and seemingly superhuman physiques.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that to truly maximize hypertrophy in your CrossFit workout, you need to crank the intensity to the max for at least some of your targeted muscle-building work.

We’re talking high-intensity techniques like:

Drop Sets After completing all reps of a given exercise, quickly strip off some weight and immediately pump out more reps with minimal rest. Then strip again, and repeat for 3-4 drops total. The accumulated fatigue creates an insane muscle-building stimulus.

Eccentric Overload Focus on really emphasizing and lengthening the eccentric (lowering) portion of exercises like squats, presses, and rows. This maximally loads and damages the muscle fibers for bigger growth.

Forced Reps Using a spotter, grind out a few extra reps past failure on your last set of exercises. Just 2-3 assisted reps can make a big difference in your growth over time.

Rest/Pause Training Instead of traditional straight sets, take a very brief 10-15 second break when you hit failure, then punch out a few more reps. Repeat for an utterly punishing set!
Intense stuff for sure – but that’s exactly what you need to fully optimize your CrossFit muscle-building efforts!