Sun, Nov 27, 2022
Read in 5 minutes
You will need muscular endurance in order to survive the sandbag lunges and wall balls.
You will also need to decide when its best to train for muscular endurance.
Skipping that hard decision, here’s how you might do it …
You can increase your muscular endurance (In no particular order):
Max Strength
There is a correlation between maximum strength and muscular endurance. To a layman’s eye it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that a lot of the most successful Hyrox athletes are insanely strong.
Being strong makes the demands easier but if you think on that for just a second its often also quoted that being able to do 1 rep max lift is not equivalent to be able to doing a large number of reps with a low weight so what’s going on here!
There are numerous studies into the connection between maximum strength and muscular endurance. It’s seems there is consensus there is a correlation but they are not agreed why and to what degree.
In the following paper the author makes a few conclusions:
The correlation between maximum strength and muscular endurance is likely stronger for high intensity workouts (Yes Hyrox is high intensity!)
The volume of strength training plays a factor in muscular endurance.
Although typical strength training does not increase your vo2 max one theory is that stronger athletes are more efficient or economical in their movements making endurance exercises easier with a lower weight.
The relationship between strength and power, increase you maximal strength often is accompanied by increases in power or force development making. It is possible these adaptations can increase endurance.
I can tell you from first hand experience just trying to do 100 sandbag lunges everyday isnt necessarily the best way to go about trying to master the station. There is of course a time and a place for such things but most of us have limited time to train for events like Hyrox and this is not the most optimal way.
As the saying goes quality over quantity might
Might actually translate to more like quality with heavy weights has some reprecocial effect.
The human body does become more efficient at a specific technique e.g. lunges and much like with pull ups there is a muscle memory and elasticity to the movement making it easier with repeated effort however everyone has a limit. Consider a marathon the general wisdom given is not to train in your longer runs the entire 26 miles because ultimately it is not worth the cost. Although people have and can run marathons back to back the amount of time to prepare and train the body is far too much.
What is my point? that you must train the mental aspect of your endurance and that comes from grinding and hard work in sessions. It is very easy to give up and there will be times that you feel awful and need to continue on.
Increase your volume over time and make sure that you are mentally strong in any endurance exercise.
You can apply the same technique to that when running longer distances you can build up your endurance over time. With strength exercises you can break up a long rep count into sets.
Knowing the feeling when you are 75 reps into the sandbag lunges and having some options is key:
Everyone has different coping methods when in the ‘pain zone’
Here are a few that I have heard of or used in the past:
Maths
Sets of X
See the finish line / Focus Point
Affirmattions
Look up David Goggins and you will understand the power of the mind when it comes to endurance efforts.
You can change your e.g. stroke length, intensity etc.
You can move the exercise to focus more on a non fatigue muscle e.g. in lunges if you lean forward it becomes more quad dominant, this can give your hips a rest. You thus can endure more with a small tweak.
You can increase your stance and lunge to the centre to give you more stability making the exercise feel easier, it will be a slow motion however.
You will likely notice this in crossfit or hyrox wods as a result; You now know why.
Pyramids are a great way to increase your rep count/volume in order to increase your muscular endurance while making it manageable. You can even play around with timing, spread out lunges or pushups throughout the day and you will surprised by the weekly volume.
21, 19, 15, 11 …
The aim is to develop mitochondria in slow and fast twitch fibres so you can generate power without acid and less fatigue metabolites.
You need to workout 30-40+ mins
Method 1: Slow Twitch Fibres
For slow fibre muscles you are working right below your anaerobic threshold
You must not fail the talking test - You should be able to talk while doing the exercise e.g. running
For fast fibre muscles you use repeat training. Sprint intensely just until slight fatigue but before any actual fatigue then rest (could be walking) and repeat.
You can then play around with the following rest periods:
1. Low rest - next is more difficult i.e. interval training
2. Medium rest - Same level of performance expected after the training
3. High rest - Super compensation occurs from the rest and you can perform the exercise with same ease or it is easier