Accessory Workouts For Fitness Athletes

Many fitness athletes crush their daily WOD, eat right, and sleep properly. But still, they find themselves looking for just a little more to help push their performance. For many athletes, adding targeted accessory workouts can be the key to hitting their performance goals.

At Performance Plus, we specialize in writing accessory programs for athletes of all levels, helping you CRUSH YOUR GOALS!

This article will share the areas we believe are most important for accessory work and several example WODs you can do post-class.

For a list of our favorite accessory exercises for fitness athletes, download a copy of our free eBook here.

Fitness Athlete Accessory Workout Areas of Focus

Many of our programs in Performance Plus focus on a specific goal. For example, building strength for your first kipping bar muscle-up or improving your hip mobility. In helping over 50,000 athletes on our platform, we’ve seen several key areas that accessory workouts are highly beneficial for fitness athletes.

• Lat Strength – the lats are incredibly important in so many fitness movements from barbell pulling exercises to kipping and strict pull-ups, T2B, and muscle-ups. Strength-building accessory movements for the lats should be a high priority for fitness athletes.
• Core Strength – whether you want to improve your gymnastics, barbell strength, or work towards your six-pack goals, core strength is a must.
• Mobility work – fitness exposes athletes to strength movements performed in more range of motion than in almost any other recreational fitness activity. See our Ultimate Mobility Checklist for help determining where your mobility needs help. This resource breaks down common cross training foundational movements and to help you determine where to focus your mobility work
• Glutes – strong glutes produce improvements in almost any athletic movement. But as a cross training fitness athlete, you’ll need more than just glute bridges to build stronger glutes
• Back strength – while there is a lot of focus on core and glute strength in many athletes’ accessory work, building a strong back has massive impacts on your barbell lifts and will reduce your risk of injury to the lower back
• Shoulder Prehab – studies on fitness athlete injuries show that the shoulder is the most injured area. Focusing on prehab work here should always be a priority to maintain shoulder health.
• Grip Strength is an overlooked component of the progress of stronger barbell lifts and gymnastics skills. Don’t let this be a weak link in your performance!

Here are six different examples of fitness athlete accessory workouts to hit several of these important areas!

For more accessory workouts, download a free copy of our 28-day Accessory WODs plan!

 

Example Accessory WODs

Back & Core Strength

• 4 Rounds for Quality
• x8 Pendlay Rows
• 50m Suitcase Carry

Shoulder Prehab

• 12min AMRAP
• x12 IR Diagonal Per Side
• x10 Face Pull Y Press
• x8 Down Dogs

Glute Work

• 3 Rounds for quality
• x10-15 Band Resisted Hip Hinge
• x20-30 Frog Pumps (pause at the top of each rep)
• Rest 1 minute between rounds

Gymnastics Strength

• 8 min EMOM
• Within 1 minute complete the following:
• 3 Wall Walks then 10 Pushups

Arm Day

• 10min AMRAP
• x21 Band Tricep Pushdowns
• x15 Band Upright Rows
• x9 Band Hammer Curls

Lat Strength

• 2-3 Rounds
• x6 Chin-ups (or toe assisted)
• x12 Ring Rows
• x25 Straight Arm Pulldowns