How to train for Hyrox. Part 3
You’re reading this because you want to know how to train for Hyrox.
Which means, you’ve read my previous two articles on Hyrox training, and you’ve established the following:
It doesn’t make sense to be overly focussed on coming up with combinations of the different exercise stations that you come across in Hyrox and pass it off as Hyrox training.
Why? Because Hyrox is a fitness competition - the fittest person will complete the course in the fastest time.
So how should you structure your Hyrox training programme?
The answer is - like any other good strength & conditioning programme for any other sport.
One of the main problems that arises when a new sport like Hyrox emerges, is a slew of people who have no idea how to structure a proper strength & conditioning programme - and what you end up with, inevitably, are just a set of workouts that overly mimic the sport, whilst giving very little transfer to the athlete.
This isn’t strength & conditioning - it’s badly programmed cobbled together “workouts”, that might get your heart rate up a bit and make you feel good, but they have no contextual overview of how to move and develop someone through all the various stages of GPP, overreaching and tapering that a Hyrox competitor will need to perform well on the day.
I’ll make the point again - the fittest person will win Hyrox.
Therefore, when you realise this - you need to get very good at understanding what the energy system demands of the sport are, and understand how to structure training to maximise the benefits of training to perform well in that energy system.
There are a number of ways to structure this and it will depend very much on the level of training that the athlete can recover from.
For beginners to Hyrox and for amateur/fun competitors, then I would suggest some level of being able to run on a regular basis. It may make sense to begin by building volume with a lot of easy running - because there is actually very little evidence that any hard running (aka intervals) are any better than just good old easy volume for amateur runners. It’s easier to recover from than intervals and can therefore add more training volume to an amateur athlete’s programme without them burning out. I would also suggest that amateur athletes go through a minimum of two full body strength training sessions per week (again, I need to emphasise that these sessions should not mimic the exercise stations at Hyrox - they should be entirely about improving the strength, especially weak areas, of a person).
Lastly, It may be useful to practise the exact exercise stations in Hyrox across one or two separate conditioning sessions per week, but with a view to working in the same energy systems used in the actual Hyrox event. Remember, there’s still no evidence to prove that training “above the speed of the event” is going to help on the day. And ultimately, if you understand how many times you can bring a person (or yourself) to their critical power output before they are officially done in and can no longer perform exercise - the obvious solution is to never get someone near their critical power output (aka above threshold pace/too high lactate) during the Hyrox event - which means - they need to stay as aerobic as possible throughout.
What does all this boil down to? Get as fit as possible, so you can handle the race without going near your burnout level.
If however you’re a Hyrox competitor, or someone who has a few races under your belt - then I have other, more advanced methods that I would deploy for your training. I’d happily go into it all on here, but there are so many variables that go into making an individual programme a success, that it’s always better to talk through these things in person. And we haven’t even gone near nutrition yet (I’m also an MNU Nutritionist, by the way).
If you’re out to podium at Hyrox, then fill out the application form and I’d be happy to coach you through the process (ideally a 16 week build up is good, but a 12 week if you are already in good condition will do just fine).
Hope you found this useful…