The Absorption Principle — The Key to Unlocking Your Fitness Potential?

Hi, it’s Jason here. Can I share something with you? Maybe you can relate.

It’s about that surge of motivation, a fresh goal you can clearly envision, and the energy you feel when you decide you’re going for it — whatever your fitness objective may be. 

And perhaps this has happened to you, too: I get started. I’m building momentum, feeling strong, and then something happens. My shoulder flares up. My elbow begins to ache. And bam! Just like that, I'm forced to take time off. 

Sometimes, yes, we catch a bad break — a fall, a contact injury, or a freak accident. But more often, as in my case, the root problem is this: training volume increases too fast before the body can absorb it.

Like saturating a paper towel beyond capacity — eventually the excess drips out and away from the towel, which begins to break down and fall apart.

In the same way, when we expose our bodies to far more load than it can effectively absorb, not only do you not get the full benefit of all that training, but your body begins to wear down — and eventually it breaks down.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let me first commend your bravery here >>>

You're taking action. You're making the commitment. You’re showing up for a better version of yourself. And that's undeniably worthy of praise.

But when you're prepping for a HYROX race — in which muscular durability, run speed, power endurance, and the metabolic integration of the parts are crucial — you cannot ignore the critical component of absorption. 

By the time you finish reading this (in about 5–7 minutes), you'll have better understand how to plan better, how to detect early warning signs of overtraining, and how to increment your volume week-to-week in a way that actually builds you up instead of breaking you down.

Why Absorption Matters — The Physiology Behind It

Every training stimulus (workout) can trigger an adaptation: muscle fibers become denser and more responsive to neural signals; more mitochondria form within your cells; end-capillary units multiply and fortify; your lungs form a greater recruitment of lung alveola. 

But those training stimuli only convert into your body's performance if your body is given adequate time and recovery between workouts, thus allowing your body's system to fully absorb the information from training, and respond in a supercompensatory manner. 

Supercompensation is when a training stimuli convert into an adaptation, and your body rebounds -- i.e. compensates -- beyond the previous performance level. 

Without effective absorption of training, supercompensation will not obtain. And unless a sophisticated approach to training is utilized -- one which accounts for the pitfalls of overtraining -- effective absorption will not occur. 

A Sophisticated Approach

Dr. Iñigo San Millán, coach of Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar, emphasizes the importance of low-to-moderate intensity training (Zone 2) in building mitochondrial health, fat oxidation, and lactate clearance capacity. This also helps build volume without imposing too great a demand on the body. 

This type of low-intensity, longer-duration training builds the crucial of aspect of your fitness called Aerobic Base. 

In other words: your foundation matters.

One key reason HYROX athletes succeed is because any high-intensity work they do is layered on top of a robust aerobic and structural base.

But if you pile on too much high intensity too early, without your Base, your body can’t keep up. And like a castle built of sand, the first wave of adversity can take your fitness to the ground.

This is the core of the Absorption Principle:

You will only absorb the training your system has room for. Anything beyond that is either ineffective or harmful.

When you train above your absorption threshold, a few things happen:

• Your adaptations do not stabilize — they may even regress.

• Recovery is delayed, meaning your next session starts from a deficit.

• Injury risk increases dramatically as structural, metabolic, and neuromuscular systems are fatigued.

In practical terms for HYROX preparation, the factors you’re training include:

• Strength endurance (sled pushes and pulls, sandbag lunges, farmer's carry, wall balls)

• Power and speed (running, burpee broad jump, ski and row ergs)

• Aerobic endurance under load (compromised running)

If any one of those areas is overloaded without adequate absorption, results fade and breakdown starts.

The Early Warning Signs — Is Your Body Telling You To Slow Down?

Distinguishing normal soreness from warning signs is critical. Here’s how to tell:

If you’re getting into warning-sign territory, now is the time to take corrective action.

The first rule: stop doing the thing that ‘did the thing’. If running triggered the issue — stop running. If heavy deadlifting caused it — back off deadlifts.

If the discomfort is localized and shows inflammation — ice it, elevate it, and aggressively support the repair process (nutrition, sleep, mobility).

The Cost of Ignoring Absorption

What happens if you push beyond your absorption limit? Two big consequences:

1. The “training” you’re doing above threshold can’t be absorbed — it becomes wasted stress -- junk volume.

2. Because you haven’t recovered from previous loads, every subsequent session starts with a deficit — meaning you accumulate fatigue instead of fitness.

Picture a paper towel: once soaked past its capacity, it cannot pick up any more liquid. And any attempt to pick up more only creates a mess >>>

That’s your body. Constant dumping of overload without absorption means nothing improves — your gains and progress drip away as your risk of injury only increases.

Research shows a large population of athletes quit on account of “too much too soon”; as the associated mental fatigue, continual soreness, protracted discomfort, and disappointment build.

And the psychological side? It’s real. When you expect huge results in 30 days because you’ve been "doing a lot", but the body can’t deliver, feeling defeated is normal. 

The mental burnout that comes from overtraining is as destructive as the physical.

How to Implement the Absorption Principle for HYROX Prep

1. Strategize Volume Increases: Instead of maxing out from week one, start with a sustainable amount of volume (5 to 7 hours) and increase deliberately and with discernment — perhaps 5–10% per week, not 25–30%.

2. Build Your Base: Use low-to-moderate intensity (Zone 2) for aerobic foundation and joint/tissue resilience. Watch this video for an in-depth breakdown for how to "build your base".

3. Integrate Intensity Over Time: As Base develops, your body will better respond to high intensity work along with strength demands -- reducing soreness and accelerating your recovery time. This allows you to introduce a higher volume of intensity safely and more effectively. 

4. Monitor Symptoms: Use the warning-sign table above. Be honest. If you feel structural or persistent fatigue, back off and/or seek a higher level of care. 

5. Prioritize Recovery: Sleep, nutrition & hydration, mobility work, and corrective exercises aren't optional, they're critical to your process; and without prioritized recovery your results simply will not obtain.

6. Think Bigger: You’re not prepping just for a weekend HYROX event; you’re constructing yourself into a resilient athlete. You're probably over-estimating what you can achieve in 30 days while dramatically underestimating what you can achieve in 3 years. 

Closing Thoughts

The Absorption Principle is your guardrail — the difference between training smart for a long time and training broken for a short time 

Remember, you're taking massive action just by getting started. And your top objective now is to keep going.

This requires that you be patient and let your body absorb the work. Realize your fitness is more than one long chain, it's the sum of many links chained together over broad time. 

A problem most newer athletes have is they don't understand that the Top Athletes in their sport have been working for years, decades even, to achieve elite fitness.

When you're watching the Elite 15 HYROX athletes on course, you're witnessing a lifetime of commitment, not just a single training phase. 

Being a great athlete takes more than potential and motivation -- it takes the maturity to see the long-game and the commitment to withstand the adversity of of it.