How to Structure your Hyrox Training

This is important listen up

Structuring your training for Hyrox is the most important thing you need to do. It will keep you motivated and ensure you are not doing the wrong things at the wrong time.

The goal is to peak at the correct time (i.e. on race day) and to not burnout or injure yourself.

Mostly likely you do not have a large amount of time. If you have an extended period of time then you have the time for your body to adapt and structuring your plan is useful but not essential.

The other important note is that if you don’t structure your programming you mostly be either doing random workouts which will lead to random results (for the most part) or you will not be doing the required work in the gym; as you will not be held accountible to what you are doing. My point is that it is far too easy to go into a gym with the intention to do something specific and ending up doing is something different or only partially.

To put simply you must first answer/understand the following:

1. What are you / do you have a background?
2. How much time do you have and what obligations do you have?
3. Do you understand Periodisation?
4. Do you know what period block to start from?
5. Do you understand how to run periodic tests?

Having done the following you should be able to:

• Choose a 3/4+ Cycle

• Choose an area/s of improvement

• Select your first cycle

Understand Your Background

Everyone is different, you must understand your background so you know best what phase to start your training on. Otherwises it unlikely you will achieve the best results possible.

If you are a complete beginner with no specific background, I would recommend focusing on your aerobic base first.

If you have a running background mostly likely you need to work on your strength first.

If you have a strength background (a regular gym-goer focusing on bodybuilding type exercises) most likely you need to focus on running.

Periodisation

I could probably start talking about mesocycles, macrocycles, microcycles … but the reality is it is very simple:

• You need to breakdown your training into phases

• Each phase is necessary so that you can see the greatest adaptation by focusing and not being too tired to work at the required intensity during a workout.

E.g. in the strength phase if you are working out a day after a compromised run your legs could be too fatigued to adequately allow you to improve your one rep max deadlift.

Can you combine several things at once? Yes you can but it will not have as a good result. You need to build a strong foundation … to then work from in later cycles.

Click here if you interested in the detailed definitions.

Analyse how much time do you have and demands?

How much time do you have before your race?

Ideally you will have between 8-12 weeks. Better if you have between 12 - 16 weeks.

Note: Ideally if you are begineer or lacking in strength you may need a bit lot longer. Do not use this as an excuse not to do a Hyrox (this is about the journey not the destination).

Maximising strength can take a year or two, often connective tissues take this long to see results. The good news is that if you are new to strength exercises you will mostly likely see massive gains as a novice, it’s a lot harder for experienced gym goers.

If you have less than 8 weeks I am sorry to say that’s not enough time in my opinion excluding if you are an experienced athlete or have strong core competanecies in running or strength. Don’t get me wrong you can muddle your way through Hyrox but you won’t see the results of any of your work. With less than 8 weeks you are likely to overtrain or risk injury in order to speed up your training before your race.

You may ask yourself what do I need to be to compete as a Hyrox athlete. Being from the UK, I think the easiest answer that question would be to say that you want the characteristics of a rugby player.

Rugby players need to be able to run for the entire game, show explosive speed at time, core strength and power in various stages of a match. This amounts to power endurance, this is exactly what the demands of Hyrox are.

Does that mean you should start playing Rugby.. well no but hopefully I have gotten my point across.

Period Testing

Do not ignore your weaknesses.

How will you know your weaknesses without testing in a controlled setting?

There are many ways to do this:

• PFTs
• Hyrox Simulations

You must factor some simulations, tests into your training.

Further Reading: Recreating the Feeling

Quick Start Guide

Having understood the prerequisites you should be in a position to answer the following:

• What is your background?

• 3/4 cycles

• Area/s of improvement

• Select your first cycle

3 Cycle Block

Strength

In this mesocycle you are trying to increase your maximum strength.

We want to strengthen our posterior chain and it may make sense to split between lower & pull/push workouts so that we have the maximum adaptation.

This is a foundation, so much so that if you look at a lot of top Hyrox athletes in the off season they are not training Hyrox specific movements and workouts. They are often working on basic strength or isolated competencies.

Remember in order to get good results and to actually get good at something you need to focus on it.

See article how maximum strength is a method for muscular endurance here

The aim is to:

• Make the demands of Hyrox easier

• Build the foundation to make your running, muscular endurance easier later.

How

• 3x3 or 3x5 (low rep to increase our)

• Lower Split & Push/Pull or Combined Body workouts

The key in this cycle is to ensure good enough recovery for maximum gains and to keep it simple. Choose one posterior chain, one or two pull, one or two push and a core exercise for good measure.

In order to structure your strength block read the following:

How to Structure your Hyrox Strength Cycle

Strength/Muscular Endurance

In this mesocycle you are trying to increase your muscular endurance.

The aim is to:

• Deal with strength endurance aspects of Hyrox like 100m of sandbag lunges

• Understand both mentally and physically the pacing required for such exercises e.g. when to pause/breathe on lunges

How:

• Increase of volume (High Rep)

• 50/60% of your one rep maximum

You can include some compromised parts to any of these workouts as in the actual event you will be heavily fatigued by the time you get onto some stations.

How to Increase your Muscular Endurance

Aerobic Engine

You must have a strong aerobic engine, if you are gassed you will not be able to execute max power when needed i.e. you can be as strong as an oxe but if you are tired you will be useless.

Think about this for a second. It is so important.

The aim is to:

• Increase your threshold tolerance while performing

How:

• Zone 2/3 Heart Rate Long steady 90 min runs, Long Rows or Cycling

• Threshold / Interval Running

• Compromised Running

NOTE: Ensure you are deloading every 4 or so weeks. Look up deloading if you unsure what I mean.

4 Cycle Block or More

With four or more blocks you will have 16+ weeks.

A 4 Cycle is exactly the same as the three week cycle however you have another cycle to focus on one of the aspects which is most likely going to be your aerobic engine.

The extra time also can be good to add some variations, look at specific areas of weakness or hyrox specific workouts.

How:

• Do another Strength, Aerobic Block
• Metabolic Conditioning/Hyrox Specific Block

Area/s of Improvement

If you are a first timer to Hyrox you will likely not have the data to know what areas to improve. Of course you can run a hyrox simulation but it has limited use.

I would recommend just focusing on your weakest area and if you don’t know what that is, to just focus on running as your area to improve; it will have the largest benefit.

How many days a week should I train

This is a difficult question to answer and ultimately you will need to look at your schedule to determine what you can and can’t do because of your various commitments.

If you are more seasoned athlete or have a good base you might be able to do 5 days a week.

In an ideal world you would run AM and perform your workouts in PM allowing you to do attack both components during your 12-16 week cycle. This is a strong ask for most people because of time and general fatigue but it’s good to understand it so you can experiment with it. Perhaps running at 5:30am everyday is easy and you just need to drop you intensity to have the energy needed for a PM workout.

Here are some examples from other trainers/athletes. Use them as a guide but remember everyone is different and at different stages of their fitness journey.

What about mobility?

If you are like most people you will likely be lacking mobility in some areas, the trapping of modern life unfortunately. Mobility is not just a requirement for some stations in Hyrox there is an important connection between strength, flexibility and efficiency.

It’s not a coincidence that yoga has a positive performance effect on running.

Including mobility into your program can be done in a few different ways:

• Including mobility exercises daily

• Focus on mobility/yoga on recovery days to also aid in active recovery

• Pre / Post / During a normal workout

  • When working on classic strength you can include mobility exercises when in rest (the 1-2 mins between reps)

e.g. Combined pushups with Xiaopeng Forward for mobility

• Warm Up could include mobility exercises: cat cow, shoulder delocates, band exercises.

Mobility before a workout can be a good prehab for injury preventation.

Note: Mobilty and flexibility aren’t the same thing. You might need to focus on flexibility before including mobilty.

Burnout / Fatigue

I am all for punishment but remember you are doing this to make your life better not worse. The fatigue from heavy workouts like hyrox simulation is totally real and can totally ruin your week training if you are not a seasoned athlete and you can feel terrible because of it.

It’s important to listen to your body and focus on the positive for improvement. However don’t use this as an excuse to skip leg day!

Theory & Further Analysis

Improving functional fitness is a difficult proposition so to add to our understanding we can analyse the following functional fitness diagrams:

Intensity Endurance Pyramid

In order to be the best athlete we want to have the following speed, strength and stamina. In sports like rugby you are required to have power and endurance as well as at time speed e.g. to sprint for a try. With rowing we need to combine strength and endurance.

You might ask the question how to I train when I need to combine strength and endurance at the same time. In general the advice is to train strength or endurance invidividually for the best gains however when you are cycle of training for an event you need to do both.

Many people have been experimenting with so called ‘hybrid training’ and learnt much from it.

To workout how to combine what they have learnt consider the above diagram, in order to structure a 4 week cycle:

In order to succeed we need to create a solid aerobic base and the final week will need to be a deload or recovery week.

• The first week would be a lot of intensity but less volume.

• The second week would be a drop in intensity but more volume, to build stamina..

• The third week would have two intensity sessions and the highest volume.

• The four week would be a deload.

i.e. we are trying to train both ends of the pyramid at the same time.

Fitness Continuum

The following diagram could be better represented as a venn diagram however for ease of visualisation the following diagrams represents how in order to create the best athelete we must take into account all the components.

You can consider how focusing on one area can have affects on the others.

As your strength increases it will have an impact on your speed and cardio endurance but have some positive effect on muscular endurance.

What makes structuring your workouts so difficult is that its personal. Everyone will start off on the above diagram in a completely different place. How quickly you can move towards the centre is dependent on not only your workout program but the intensity, recovery, nutrition etc.

The point here is that everyone starts at a different point and each time you focus on a specific factor it can effect the other factors. Creating that perfect balance is not easy.

Factors Affecting Hyrox

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🏴‍☠️ Hyrox Daily 🏴‍☠️ (@hyroxdaily)

Consider the diagram above trying to examine the factors affecting hyrox performance.

In some ways it is similar to the our first example however this diagram tries to explain what factors to focus on when training rather than understanding how to do your workouts.

The foundation of the pyramid is aerobic capacity. This is the base for Hyrox so you can produce power if you are gassed.

The post how to define aerobic capacity as:

This is why it’s important to take a look at your VO2 max as an indicator. Most running watches now can track VO2.

See this article on the accuracy of the optional sensor to track VO2:

The key point here you need a strong aerobic base and you should per mesocycle or monthly be keeping an eye on your progress.

Remember however that progress can feel non-linear and it’s merely an indicator and if your aerobic capacity is not where it should be; focus on it!

The middle section is power or (functional threshold power)

Described in the post as

Your body must be use to producing power while getting rid off lactic.

When we talk threshold we mostly common associate with our ability to run @ threshold pace. What we can run for a hour under medium intensity/difficulty.

This is opposed to a steady state pace where we should be able to hold a conversation while running.

You can apply this ‘feeling’ to Hyrox workouts to understand what your performance will likely be.

The third session of the pyramid is the tip of the spear called Metabolic Conditioning and create a variety to allow the body to adapt.

Programming Fundmentals and Periodisation

To often someone will try to say one program is better than all others; most of the time this simply isn’t the case.

There are fundamentals to programming and how the body responds to exercise, understanding them will help you decide what is best for you and your goals.

Programming Fundamentals

• Endurance training requires mitochondrial adaption:

  • You can maintain 80-90% with just 2-3 sessions per week

• It can take 4/5 weeks to fully recover 10% loss that occurs in one week

• Gaining Strength happens slowly and can take years to maximize

• 2 weeks of inactivity has zero effect on mass or strength

• 4 weeks of zero training causes small but very temporary losses

• Recovery for 4 weeks can be recovered within 3 weeks

• Once you have gained new muscle mass you can regain it quickly then the time it took to build it up

In order to program your traininig you need to chunk your programming into blocks which can be a variant in volume, resistance, tempo, frequency. The aim of the chunking process is focus on what you need most of.

This chunking process is called periodisation.

Proper periodisation is about creating a block, so that the next block will be successful.

A Good Example:

Create a mass building before a strength, then a sport specific after that.

This is because creating mass via hypertophy is the root of strength.

The strength block helps maximize recruitment efficiency

The sport-specific block translates that efficiency into sport-specific power

Bad Example:

You program an endurance block, then a sport-specific power block, then a mass block, then another endurance block, then a strength block

The endurance block destroys neuromuscular efficiency, which lowers your usable strength and does not build as much new mass (if any) as you needed to set the stage for a strength or power increase

The power block is now unable to bring you to a new personal best level of performance because you did not add new mass OR increase your recruitment efficiency for the mass you have. You actually decreased that efficiency below what a mass block would have done

The Mass block is fine, at least you’re building some new muscle mass to use and gets your body used to heavier loads again

The Endurance block will once again lower neuromuscular efficiency, and also cause fiber-specific performance changes that make you unnecessarily weak as you enter the upcoming strength block

The strength block will help maximise your efficiency, but you have failed to set this block up for success by placing it immediately after the mass block! If you don’t get your act together and follow a much more intelligent periodization scheme you’ll see very poor performance results for the amount of work you put in.

Microcycle

• Is the smallest training block/cycle
• Typically a week (includes recovery also)
• Varies the stress/intensity

An athlete could increase the volume e.g. 4 cycles to produce large mileage.

The aim is help the next weeks cycle across a mesocyle

Mesocycle

• Typically 3-4 weeks (includes recovery also)
• When we talk cycles generally we are referrig to mesocycles

Macrocycle

• The longest training cycle

• Normally your annual plan includes:

  • preparation phase (could be building your aerobic base)
  • competitive phase
  • transition phase (off-season)

The competition phase ends in tapering so you are at your peak for race day

Further Reading

• https://reinforcedrunning.com/hyrox-training-program/
• Hyrox Bodyweight Plan

References

https://labcoatfitness.com/articles/programming-part-1-general-fundamentals-of-programming]