So you’ve decided to try your first fitness race, and need a good training program for Hyrox Athletes. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place. The bad news is this program isn’t easy. This is a high intensity functional training program designed to sharpen your fitness for a Hyrox race. At the end of this program you should be well prepared to post your best time. Keep reading for more.
Readers of this website will know that I write a lot of fitness programs. I’ve got plans for functional fitness athletes, hybrid athletes, bodybuilders, powerlifters, and everyone in between. This will be my first program aimed at those competing in Hyrox events.
If you’re not familiar with Hyrox competition, you’ll find that it’s a super tough mix of cardiovascular conditioning, in the form of running, paired with 8 different mini workouts that will certainly tax your full body. In the section below you’ll see how a Hyrox event is structured.
Hyrox Race Events
You’ll notice that there are different options for athletes of all fitness levels. You can also compete as part of a team at a Hyrox Race. This allows you to choose your specific Hyrox challenge, depending on your current fitness level.
Before we get to the specifics of this fitness program, I need to point a few things out. First, this isn’t an official Hyrox training plan. I have no affiliation with them. This program is simply how I would train one of my athletes to get ready for race day.
This workout routine is suitable for athletes that have some experience with functional exercises, as well as running. You don’t have to be a pro athlete to do this program, but you do need safe form on the lifts. If you’re very new to training, I might recommend following this program first.
In the next section I’m going to review the specific physiological demands of a Hyrox event. It’s important to know the principles behind the training program so you understand why these workouts are structured the way they are. Let’s cover a quick but thorough analysis below.
The Physiological Demands of Hyrox Events
For most athletes a Hyrox Race is an endurance event lasting approximately 90 minutes. This means that your aerobic energy system is going to be providing the bulk of your energy for the event. As such, any decent training plan should work to build this capacity.
We can also see that each workout taxes different muscle groups. In this analysis we can exclude the Ski Erg, and Rower, as they are primary another aerobic capacity test. This leaves us with things like sled pushing / pulling, wall balls, weighted lunging, and other similar movements.
We can broadly categorize these movements into lower body muscular endurance moves. If you read my recent article on muscular endurance you’ll know that there are only a few ways to build endurance. You can train your energy systems, increase your maximal strength, or focus on high rep sets.
Of note, high rep sets only seem to work well with lower body movements. Researchers haven’t found any strong correlations between high rep upper body strength training and meaningful increases in muscular endurance, for those muscle groups.
To summarize, Hyrox races require a large aerobic capacity paired with lower body strength and muscular endurance. There are only a few workouts that require much upper body work, in an actual race. Now that we have a good idea where we should focus our training, let’s get to the program.
If you really want to improve your Hyrox performance and overall fitness, you need to build your strength and conditioning for more than 8 weeks. Give this program a shot first.
8 Week Functional Training Program for Hyrox Athletes
As the title implies this training program for Hyrox Athletes will be 8 total weeks in length. We will cover the first cycle, which will be four weeks in length, in this article. I’ll release the other 4 weeks shortly, so you can continue on without interruption.
Make sure you read through each week, as I will cover some coaching notes for the specific workouts in further weeks, that will apply to the current week. It saves you from making mistakes with the program. Now let’s get to week 1.
Functional Training Program for Hyrox Athletes: Week 1
Like many of my other fitness programs, the first week incorporates some high-intensity interval training and testing into the program. This training program for Hyrox Athletes is no different. The first day is one of my favorite aerobic capacity tests for hybrid athletes.
You will perform an easy warm up jog, followed by some rest. When you’re ready you will perform a 1 mile run, followed immediately by a 2k row. These two portions are for total time. This test will give you a good idea of your true aerobic capacity.
Quite often athletes who are heavier will do well on the row, because their mass is a great benefit. They quite often struggle with the run due to their higher mass. Smaller athletes are the opposite. This is why I pair the two tests together. No one athlete type benefits on both tests.
You can see later in the week that we include specific events and movements you’ll see in a Hyrox workout, like burpee broad jumps. This is an on going theme. Each week includes some specific exercises from the mini workouts including: sled pulls, wall balls, and weighted / sandbag lunges. Let’s get to week 2.
Functional Training Program for Hyrox Athletes: Week 2
In Week 2 we start the first true week of the fitness plan. There are no more tests, just training to improve your Hyrox fitness. Astute readers will notice that I’ve paired a fairly even mix of pure Zone 2 endurance training and functional fitness style HIIT training. This ensures that both primary energy systems are trained with a holistic approach.
If we look at Tuesday, we can see that this is a long run, Zone 2 day. If you’re unfamiliar with Zone based training, you can read a bit more about it here. Zone 2 is the highest zone where nearly all of your energy comes from aerobic energy production.
It’s very important to train in this Zone because it increases your ability to produce energy without relying on the anaerobic energy system. The best way to check if you’re in Zone 2 is to breathe through your nose for 20 seconds or so. That is why you see the nasal breathing checks.
If you find that you can’t breath through your nose, you are running too fast. Even a seasoned athlete might have to walk for portions of this workout, to keep the power output within Zone 2. Don’t go too fast here!
Before we go any further I want to explain some terminology for these functional workouts. Quite often you’ll see the term RIR. This is reps in reserve. It means you pick a weight that allows you to complete the specified set, leaving only those reps in reserve. A set of 10 at 2 RIR means if you went all out, you could get 12 reps.
This type of training allows you to easily regulate the weight you’re lifting without using complicated percentages. Now, on to week 3.
Functional Training Program for Hyrox Athletes: Week 3
In week 3 you will see a noticeable increase in strength training, and HIIT volume, with specific functional movements . This is what’s required to reach your fitness goals. I’ve also made sure to rotate the most common movements in a Hyrox race. It’s important to strike a balance where you don’t over practice for the actual event, while building familiarity and efficiency with the most common movements.
If we take a look at Wednesday, we can see that it’s an upper body pressing day mixed with some HIIT training on the sled. If you recall from previous articles, you need to build upper body strength to increase your muscular endurance. That is why you will see a fair amount of shoulder pressing. It directly translates to wall balls, farmers carries, and sled pushes.
For the heavy sleds, you might need to scale the load here. I want you to do hard and fast pushes / pulls with at least 40 sec of rest each minute. Some sleds, and flooring materials, will have too much friction at this load. Use your best judgement here. Now, we’ll finish with the last week of part 1.
If you found that you really struggled with the weights, and muscular endurance portions of this program, you might try running this program next, and then trying the Hyrox prep program.
Functional Training Program for Hyrox Athletes: Week 4
This last week has you lifting more overall volume. You can see the sets have gotten heavy for Friday’s strength work. Moreover, these movements are capped with 2 sets of 2min of max reps, with a relatively light load. This will help you acclimatize to the muscular endurance requirements of a Hyrox race.
You’ll also notice that there is a race WOD on Fridays. These workouts of the day (WOD) are designed to mimic the pacing and feel of an actual Hyrox event. Because they’re only 20-25 minutes in length, you should go faster than your anticipated Hyrox race pace. Don’t worry, you’ll get race practice later on in the program.
Saturdays are a combined aerobic / anaerobic running day. You’ll start the run at your standard Zone 2 pace. Towards the end you will transition to 10min at top speed. This allows you to really challenge both energy systems, and is one of my favorite ways to maximize your available time to train.
This brings us to the end of part 1. In the next section we will cover some nutrition tips, and a few recovery do’s and don’ts.
Nutrition and Recovery
The most important things you can do for your recovery are to get the appropriate amount of food, sleep, and fluids. You don’t need fancy supplements for proper nutrition, or expensive treatments like cryo therapy. There isn’t much evidence that anything like that actually works.
I recommend reading this comprehensive guide on nutrition, and downloading this nutrition calculator. It will give you a good idea where to start with a reasonable eating plan.
You can then check out this article on scientifically based recovery methods. I think you’ll be surprised that walking is one of your best bets. Let’s finish this article up.
Final Thoughts
I want to point out a few things that you need to know to do your best on a Hyrox race. First, this program is limited to 8 weeks in total length. That means I have a compressed time frame to increase your Hyrox fitness. If you really want to increase your performance over the long term, you need to work on building your overall strength, and aerobic endurance.
You should check out these programs to do just that. This 8 week training program for Hyrox athletes is really the final 2 cycles of a longer prep. It will get you ready for the race, and you’ll do very well, but 8 weeks isn’t long enough to make huge improvements.
If you’re serious about Hyrox racing, then try a few of my hybrid programs first, and run this one again. I think you’ll find your performance drastically improves, as you increase in absolute strength and cardiovascular fitness. Now get out there and get training! Don’t forget to join the email list.
Here’s part two of this 8 week training program for Hyrox athletes.
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