100 Days Til Hyrox Phoenix. You Ready?

Imagine yourself in the starting tunnel, shoulder to shoulder alongside 50 other athletes in your heat.

The lights flash. The music thumps. You can feel the electricity in arena.

And the countdown screen lets you know you now have “Ten, nine, eight…” seconds until every training hour, every workout, every training week, and your entire preparation is put to the test.

With the biggest race of your fitness career coming up, how ready do you feel?

If you’re feeling a bit of anxiety and perhaps even fear, that’s okay — normal, in fact.

Even the most prepared athletes will be feeling that spark of excitement and uncertainty at the start line. The only difference is; knowing they’ve put in the training up to that point, those prepared athletes will have confidence and competence to fall back on.

And you can, too. You just gotta get the training in.

So, what is the training you want to put in to preparing for Hyrox?

What level of preparedness will give you the confidence and competence to rip through your race and cross the finish line with a smile on your face?

Here it is:

AEROBICS MATTER MORE THAN YOU THINK
With most finish times around the 90-minute mark, Hyrox will test your endurance and aerobic capacity to the limit.

To be specific, the energy pathway most depended on in Hyrox is aerobic glycolysis — glucose conversion at a high rate using an abundance of oxygen to fuel the process.

So, not only must your muscles be able to rapidly convert sugar to chemical energy (ATP), but your cardio, pulmonary, and vascular systems must organize into a warehouse of oxygen utilization to make that conversion possible.

Training to adapt your cardiopulmonary and cardiovascular systems into an oxygen processing kingdom is simple, but it does take time. And simple doesn’t mean easy.

CHECK THIS OUT
Imagine you train 10 hours a week (average for seasoned Hyrox athletes); at least five to six of those hours will be run-specific.

And 70 percent of that — three and a half to four hours — will be low-intensity, aerobic development running.

You can also develop aerobics on erg machines — ski, row, and bike (I use an Echo Bike).

These are power-based machines, but even still, you can learn to exercise them at low-enough intensities to target your body’s aerobic functionality.

AEROBICS WORKOUT(S)
Here are three options for an Aerobics run-specific workout at three different skill levels:

LEVEL I: Beginner
40 MINUTES

• Run at “base” pace, RPE of 3 to 4
• Steady state, no speeding up, slowing down, or stopping

Once this becomes easier and/or you mark 4 or more miles in 40 minutes, extend duration to 50 and then 60 minutes. 

LEVEL II: Trained
60 MINUTES

• 40-minute “base” run at RPE 4
• 20 minutes of intervals at RPE 4 to 6
• 1min 30sec “push” at RPE 6
• 3min 30sec “base” at RPE 4
• Complete 5 rounds

You can play around with the durations for the initial “base” run as well as the interval structure on the back-portion of the overall run. 

LEVEL III: Highly Trained & Conditioned
72 MINUTES

• 40-minute “base” run at RPE 4
• 32 minutes of intervals at RPE 4 to 6
• 3min “push” at RPE 6
• 5min “base” at RPE 4
• Complete 4 rounds

Again, you can play around with the initial duration of “base” (Zone 2) running as well as your interval structure. 

The goal of these types of runs is to impose the greatest aerobic demand on your system, but not so much that your body can’t recover adequately before your next workout.

And of the 10 hours a week you workout, almost half will be work at this intensity — between RPE 3 and 6.

As I mentioned earlier, not all Aerobics training needs to be running. Here’s a great workout that blends modalities and machines:

ALL LEVELS
32 to 74 MINUTES

• 3min “base” Run at RPE 3-4
• 1min “push” Run at RPE 6
  
  
• 3min “base” Ski at RPE 3-4
• 1min “push” Ski at RPE 6
  
  
• 3min “base” Run at RPE 3-4
• 1min “push” Run at RPE 6
  
  
• 3min “base” Row at RPE 3-4
• 1min “push” Row at RPE 6

Each round is 16 minutes; complete 2 rounds (32 minutes). If you’re a highly trained & conditioned athlete then complete 3 or even 4 rounds. 

Aerobics is the foundation to a healthy Hyrox program because any good Aerobics training will not only develop your cardiopulmonary and cardiovascular systems, but it should also teach you about energy management, intensity regulation, and pacing.

When training for Hyrox, it’s not enough to be a fast runner and a strong lifter.

Success as a Hyrox athlete depends on your ability to extend your speed and strength deep into the realm of endurance.

And because endurance involves so many other factors — endocrine health, GI-health, mental durability, etc. — it takes a long time to fully develop.

So start now, you only have 100 days.

BUT DON’T LEAVE OUT STRENGTH AND POWER
There are no “outs” in a Rox Zone Workout — you either complete the objective, or you are disqualified.

Yes, there are penalties for partial completion of a Rox Zone or a missed run lap; but any more than one partially completed objective and you’ll be DQ’d.

Have you ever run a marathon? Me neither. But I hear about how people “hit the wall” with only 3 or 5 miles to go — but they finish.

When you “hit the wall” in a run race, you can still walk it out and get around the wall to the finish line.

But in Hyrox, there’s no going around the wall — you gotta go through it.

If you bonk out and “hit the wall” on your seventh kilometer after the 200-meter heavy Farmer’s Carry then while you may only have 2K of running left to do, you also have 100 meters of lunging with a heavy sandbag on your back, and wall ball shots — 100 of them.

Personally, I’ve seen people break on their lunge Rox Zone. Drop their sandbag, crumble to the floor, and not be able to finish their race.

But you can overcome this and start today to develop your base of Strength.

Like developing Aerobics, Strength is simple — just not easy.

STRENGTH WORKOUT
Here’s a Strength workout anyone can do — though, some might need instruction on the specific lifts — and the skill level is varied by the weight load prescriptions. Greater the percentage of 1RM, higher the skill level.

ALL LEVELS

E3MOM
5 Deadlift at 40 to 70% 1RM
5 Bench Press at 40 to 70%
5 BB Hang Clean at 40 to 70%

• Select a starting weight load for each movement.
• Complete 5 reps at each movement then rest for remainder of 3-minute round.
• Improve the weight loads from round to round to achieve a 5-rep limit on each movement by the 6th round.
• Complete 6 rounds.

After completing 6 rounds in the prescribed manner, complete the section below in…

E3MOM
Deadlift at 40 to 60% x 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Bench Press at 40 to 60% x 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
BB Hang Clean at 40 to 60% x 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

• Taking weight loads back to starting point of 60%, complete 6 reps each movement, each round.
• Resting for the remainder of each round, increase reps on each movement by 1 in subsequent rounds.
• Complete 5 rounds total.

Again, most people most of the time are familiar with these movements or can learn them quickly. And intensity and skill are scaled by adding or reducing weight, very incrementally.

No, you won’t do a deadlift, bench press, or barbell hang clean in a Hyrox race.

But the foundational strength associated with lifting, pressing, and jumping will serve as a launchpad for how well you can push a sled, pick up and carry heavy things, and lunge repeatedly with weight on your back.

And here’s the deal, if you don’t have a base of strength, any speed you think you have will be marginalized by how checked your legs get from the strength demands in the Rox Zone.

What’s great for you is you have more than 90 days to build your foundation before race day.

This will bulletproof your legs from becoming overly compromised and help your legs bounce back into your runs following Rox Zones.

AEROBICS AND STRENGTH SUMMARY, AND THOUGHTS

First off, welcome to Hyrox. And more importantly, welcome to training for Hyrox.

Hyrox is its own sport and in order to succeed in Hyrox, you’ll have to organize your workouts and entire training & nutrition program around a central goal of a fast Hyrox time.

And it starts with Aerobics. Your aerobic base is the bottom floor of your fitness, under which performance breaks down.

From cardio to pulmonary to vascular, these interconnected systems require long-term conditioning. And that starts with the suggestions made before.

But, Aerobics are not enough to conquer Hyrox — you must also be strong.

And while you won’t deadlift, bench, or squat your way through Hyrox, these foundational lifts will develop the requisite strength necessary to break through Rox Zone challenges without breaking down your ability to run between stations.

THOUGHTS

One afterthought — Hyrox is not “hybrid”. While training for Hyrox is hybridized, the race itself is integrated.

Just because you can run a sub-2:30 marathon and deadlift 500 pounds (hybrid fitness) does NOT mean you’ll do great in a Hyrox Race.

Hyrox blends speed, strength, power, and aerobics into a single course of work. It will push on all buttons of your fitness, and if there is a weakness anywhere, Hyrox will exploit it.

With 100 days until race day, every workout, every recovery session, every meal, and every ounce of discipline matters.

HYROX rewards preparation, not luck nor hope — and now is the time to lock in your training and test your limits.

If you live in the Phoenix Valley and want the best Hyrox training available, contact us at Suffer City and we can get you headed in the right direction.