How hard is a Spartan Ultra?
So you’ve signed up for your first Spartan Ultra, and now you’re wondering “how hard will it be?” I went through the same thing in 2021 in anticipation of my first Ultra at Dumfries, Scotland.
As you probably realize, it will be hard. It requires a bit of everything. You need full body strength. You need full body strength endurance. You need to be able to trail run 50km (32 miles). And you need to have the skills to pass 60 daunting obstacles.
But just how hard is hard?
In this article I’ll take you through the specific benchmarks that I used for my first Spartan Ultra. I ended up running my Ultra in just under nine hours, which was good enough for 11th place for my age group and a middle of the pack finish for all competitors.
Do you want to know some good goals for running mileage, deadlift or grip strength? Then read on and I’ll tell you. . .
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how hard an Ultra is.
Important Side Note
It needs to be said that not all Spartan Ultras are created equal. My Ultra was in Scotland, which I’d say is a middle of the pack race. My Garmin recorded a total of 4,232 feet of ascent, and the obstacles were typical Spartan Ultra obstacles.
If you’ve signed up for one of the more insane races, you’ll need to adjust your expectations. You could easily face three times as much ascent, and God only knows what kind of obstacles you’ll face at something like Killington.
How much strength will you need?
A Spartan Ultra will definitely test your strength. And if you’re a trail runner with no lifting experience, you’re going to suffer. I saw guys jog up to the Atlas Stone carry with terror in their eyes. They struggled without success to lift the 100 pound rock, and then after wasting time and energy on the effort, they took off their hydration packs and got started on their 30 burpees.
So how much will you have to lift? How much will you have to carry? Fortunately strength is easy to measure and compare, and the weights of many Spartan obstacles are commonly available. Thus, we can set up some precise strength benchmarks for a typical Spartan Ultra.
First, you need to measure your strength. The easiest way to do that is with your one rep max or maximum number of reps. For instance, how much can you deadlift one time? Or how many pullups can you do in one set?
Second, you need a way to compare that strength to an objective standard. We can do that with relative strength standards. Relative strength looks at your 1 RM in relation to your body weight. For instance, if you weigh 150 lbs and your max deadlift is 300 pounds, your relative strength for deadlift is 2x your body weight. From there, you can use something like Rippitoe’s strength standards to compare your lifts to other strength athletes.
Third, we need to look at the Spartan obstacles with the greatest strength demands. Fortunately, many of the Spartan obstacle weights are commonly available.
Here are some highlights.
The Spartan Bucket Carry typically weighs 80 pounds for men, and 55 pounds for women
The Yokohama Tire Flip weighs between 200 and 400 pounds. Because the tire is always touching the ground, you only ever lift half the weight.
The Atlas Stone Carry weighs approximately 100 pounds.
And the Hercules Hoist weighs about 90 pounds for men and 70 pounds for women.
And of course, Ultras typically entail some unique surprises, which require additional strength. For instance, if you signed up for Killington, all bets are off. Who knows what kind of nonsense they’re going to throw at you.
So where does this leave us? What are some good benchmarks for strength for your first Ultra?
For my Ultra, I set a goal of maintaining an intermediate level of strength on most of my lifts and a nearly advanced level of strength on my pulling/climbing strength. I based this partly off of the Spartan weights. And I based it partly off of the strength standards in the book “Building the Elite: the complete guide to developing resilient special operators.” I assumed that if I got close to the strength standards needed to survive SEAL training, I’d be good to go for a Spartan Ultra.
For reference, an intermediate level of strength typically takes 1-2 years of consistent lifting to develop. And advanced levels typically take 3-4 years.
Here’s where I was about 6 months out from the race, at which point I started focusing on strength endurance.
Overhead press 1RM was about 70% of my BW
15 one arm pushups
21 chin ups with good form and no kipping
15 Gymnastic Ring Dips
8 Tucked Body Rows
A 2minute and 20 second dead hang. And a 50s hang from a doubled over towel to test my pinching grip strength.
Deadlift 1RM at about 1.75x my BW
12 Pistol Squats
If you use different exercises, that’s perfectly fine. You can look at Rippetoe’s strength standards (CAT III corresponds to intermediate) for the common barbell lifts and strengthlevel.com for everything else.
Ultimately I had no problems in terms of raw strength. I failed just two obstacles on my first lap. One was a missed spear throw. The other was due to a lack of grip strength endurance. Some of the obstacles were still plenty hard. In particular, my pulling and hanging strength got pretty worked over. When it comes to climbing strength (pulling and gripping), I’d highly recommend aiming for something closer to advanced levels of strength.
If you hit something like these goals, you’ll be good to go. And you could certainly get through it with less strength. Just be sure you avoid a burpee marathon. Not only does that suck, it can lead to a Did Not Finish (DNF).
If you’d like to learn more about how I train for strength and size, check out these articles:
How much work capacity will you need?
As you can probably imagine, strength alone isn’t going to cut it. Your strength needs to last. Spartan Ultra’s are not strongman contests. Feats of strength that seem easy when you’re fresh can turn nightmarish 7 hours into a race.
So will your strength last for the full Ultra? How would you know? Ultimately, what you want is good old fashioned work capacity. You want to be farm-boy strong. You want to become the little energizer bunny of Spartan obstacles.
There are two simple ways to build and measure work capacity. First, there’s your rest intervals. How long do you rest between sets? For strength and hypertrophy long rest intervals are best, but for work capacity you want short rest intervals.
Second, there's your total training volume. The more sets you can do per session, the greater your work capacity.
My goal was to reduce my rest intervals to one set Every Minute On the Minute (EMOM), and I wanted to keep my volume at 5 sets for upper body and 10 sets for lower body.
Here are 3 tips to keep in mind.
Try to keep the weights relatively high. The goal is to get better at dealing with the weights you’ll encounter at the race.
Steer clear of muscular failure. The goal is to minimize the drop in reps from set to set. You don’t want your reps to fall off a cliff. You want to stay strong from beginning to end.
You need to maintain good form throughout. If you lose the mental or physical capacity to keep your form on point, the set is over. The point is to maintain effective and safe form throughout. Save the kipping pull ups and back rounded deadlifts for an emergency.
You may be wondering, what does this kind of training accomplish? First off, it increases your ability to clear metabolic waste. The buildup of metabolic waste saps strength, but you can adapt. You can get better at clearing the waste leading to more endurance. Second, it improves your muscular endurance through changes in your nervous system. The rates at which your muscle fibers fire become more efficient. And you elicit less of a stress response. The result is a less costly and more efficient movement. And finally it increases your capillary density. This allows you to bring more nutrients and clear away more metabolic waste.
Here’s where my upper body work capacity ended up.
Horizontal Pressing strength: I did 5 sets of loaded deficit push ups (EMOM). The load was 20% of my body weight. My last recorded reps were 12/12/11/9/10.
Vertical Pulling strength: I did 5 sets of loaded chin ups EMOM. The load was 13% of my body weight. My last record reps were 8/7/5/4/4/.
Horizontal pulling strength: I did 5 sets of tucked body rows EMOM with just my own body weight. My reps were 5/5/5/4/4/.
Downward pressing strength: I did 5 sets of gymnastic ring dips EMOM with just my weight. My reps were 15/12/9/7/7.
OH pressing strength: Because I was weakest here. I just kept lifting normally. Although some OCR’s have grueling overhead lifts, Spartan doesn’t seem to go that route.
I got up to 98 burpees in 7 min.
I got up to 7 minutes of farmer’s carries at 100% of body weight, broken up into as few sets as possible.
Grip strength endurance
Here I made my biggest mistake. I thought that a 2 minute and 20 second dead hang and a 50 second towel hang would be sufficient. Consequently I didn’t focus all that hard on my hanging or grip strength. I was half right. I only missed one hanging obstacle on the first lap. (They had a ridiculously long olympus wall. Every competitor I saw or talked to failed it.)
Unfortunately the traverses were wet on the second lap, and I missed 4 on that lap. Those burpees cost me time and energy. Before my next Ultra, I plan on achieving a 3+ minute dead hang and a 90 second towel hang. I’ll also work in some EMOM grip training.
What about lower body strength endurance?
I signed up for my race with nagging patella knee pain. I’d developed it two years earlier from trying to do too much too fast. I had trained for and become a MovNat Master trainer, started lifting heavy and started running long distance.
Despite all of that, I ran the race in good time and improved my knee at the same time. I relied heavily on exercises from Ben Patrick. So although this won’t be ideal for everyone, I hope it will give you an idea of what it takes to run your first Spartan Ultra.
VMO/Cyclist Squats: I worked up to 10 sets of 10 reps EMOM with a load of 20% of my body weight.
ATG/Poliquin Split Squats: I was doing 5 sets of 25 reps EMOM with my body weight.
Romanian Deadlift: Because I was weakest here. I just kept lifting normally. I had no issues deadlifting anything at the race.
There you have it. Some benchmarks for strength endurance for a middle of the pack Spartan Ultra. You could certainly run one with less upper body strength, but I wouldn't recommend it. My whole body was pretty fatigued by the end, and I was glad for every inch of training and capacity I had.
How much running will you need to do?
I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t going to run the whole thing. Not only will you be too tired, there will probably be sections where running is impossible. At Dumfries there was a long section over downed logs that was tough to hike, never mind run. And your race may have ascents that make running impossible.
Having said that, you can’t walk the whole race. You don’t have time. The obstacles eat up too much time, so you need to run as much as possible, if you want to finish.
In the end, I’d estimate I ran at least 75% of the race. My watch recorded an average moving time of 15 minutes per mile and a top speed of 6:55 per mile (certainly a downhill section). To save my legs I walked up the steepest portions right from the first lap.
I’d previously run a marathon, and I decided to approach my training like a marathon. On the one hand, you’re running further than a marathon and passing 60 obstacles, but on the other hand, your legs get lots of breaks during the obstacles and it’s normal to walk the steepest hills.
Because of my knee, I kept my running volume low. It peaked at 33 miles per week. I did cruise intervals, hill sprints and long runs. Normal marathon training. My longest run was just 14 miles, which is well short of the conventional 18 mile long-run you’d see in most marathon plans.
I did one trail run per week (typically my temp/cruise interval run). There’s a trail with some obstacles in my area, and I’d use those trail runs to simulate the race.
In the end, my legs held up really well at the race. I didn’t fade until the last quarter of the second lap. Had I done more running, I would certainly have finished faster.
So long story short, I’d say the trail running requirements are pretty similar to a marathon. The more running you can manage, the better you’ll perform, but if you can follow a marathon program, you’ll be in great shape. Getting the distance done in a reasonable time doesn’t require a special Ultra plan.
If you’d like to learn more about how I use low volume running, check out these articles:
How I trained for the obstacles
I wouldn’t recommend making an Ultra your first OCR. Fitness alone isn’t necessarily enough. The obstacles require some unique skills and athleticism to pass efficiently. There are better, more efficient ways to climb, traverse, crawl and carry. And if you tackle them as a complete novice you’re likely to enter into a burpee death spiral. 30 burpee penentalies are brutal, and they add up fast. So if you fail too many obstacles too early, you’ll start failing easy obstacles because you’ve done far too many burpees. Hence a burpee death spiral.
So how much skill does it take?
In 2018 I became a MovNat Master Trainer which set me up nicely for the race. For every obstacle, I knew an efficient way to tackle it. For the MovNatters reading this, many of the obstacles require level 2 skills. For instance, a Spartan Vertical Cargo 2.0 requires a Pop Up to pass. And of course there are rope climbs and traverses which are L3.
Having said that, if you signed up as a newbie, you can always go online and watch the Spartan obstacle tutorials. From there I’d practice. I’d also build your endurance in a variety of carries and crawls. You’re going to crawl and carry A LOT. And you’re going to do it over broken terrain.
I didn’t practice the spear throw before my race (it was my first Spartan, though not my first OCR). There were two spear throws per lap, and I missed twice. I paid 60 burpees for my lack of practice. I plan on becoming a spear throwing expert before the next Ultra.
Long story short, you can either practice the obstacles or practice burpees. I’d highly recommend the former.
If you want to learn more about how I train movement, check out these articles,
7 Tips to Master Hanging Obstacles at Your Next Spartan Race
Rail Walking: How to Build Ninja-like balance for your next OCR
Is it worth it?
A Spartan Ultra is plenty hard, but that’s the whole point. Your mind goes to all kinds of crazy places as you slog through hour after hour of running, lifting, climbing and crawling. You’ll learn more than a few things about yourself, and just imagine the feeling of jumping the fire and crossing the finish line.
Trust me, it’s more than worth it!
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this article, I think you’ll enjoy How Hard Is It: A First-Timer's Guide to the Spartan Trifecta Weekend
