Training Blocks and Periodization for Hyrox

I'm probably going to ramble a bit today and just talk about a few things that have been on my mind. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about was programming and training periodizations for Hyrox. I'll take it back to when I was coaching track and sprinting. But this can be applied and should be applied to every sport. I'm now getting involved a little bit more in the Hyrox World and I completed my first Hyrox in Syndey last year. I'm going to do another one next year, maybe two. I'll probably do doubles with my partner.

It's interesting because it's such a new sport, I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to train for it, including myself. After 20-plus years as a strength and speed athlete, I had coaching sprinters pretty well dialed in and could peak them pretty much right on time for big races. I'm seeing a lot of questions online at the moment asking how to train for Hyrox. So I wanted to go back and touch on a few things that I learned as a track coach.

The whole concept of periodization is breaking down your entire year and working backward. My Hyrox event won't be until the middle of 2024 so I don't have a full 12 months to prepare, but I have been training the last 6 months with HyRox in mind so I will have a full six months ahead. I typically think you need about 12 weeks to plan if you're training all year round and have a good cardio base.

With a good 12 weeks of preparation, you can usually get in race shape. And if you look at the UFC fighters, their training camps are somewhere between eight and 12 weeks, depending on, how out of shape they've let themselves get, and what weight division they're going to fight in. A lot of their camps are based around weight because these guys are staying in shape and training hard all the time. They just go into very specific training for that particular opponent.

Back when I was coaching track, we would always have one or two events in mind that we wanted to peak for. And typically for us, it was a State title, then a National title. They were about six weeks or eight weeks apart. Sometimes, in all honesty, they're better if they're closer together and you find that you can you the first event for peaking for the second. Sometimes you blow it. I’ll come back to that.

🏃‍♂️ Let’s run through some basic periodization methodologies, from a track point of view. You have an Off-Season Phase, a General Prep Phase, a Specific Prep Phase, and a Competition Phase.

Let's say we had mid-year relays, and then we still had our state and national championships coming up. We would go back into a mini-endurance phase. So we would back off the intensity a little bit, go back to a bit of endurance, build up our endurance again, and then slowly build the intensity again.

If you think about training somewhere between a four and six-week block, we would typically use a four-week block, and if you Google any standard periodization training block, it goes week 1 at a particular level and it is a stepped effect through to week 3. So week one, X amount of volume, X amount of speed, X intensity, week two slightly increases, and week three, increases a bit further. And then week four comes off a little bit. And then in our situation, we would often, if we've had an extended block up to six weeks, we would have a de-load week. Then you start week one again, which is potentially slightly higher intensity and load than week one from the previous block, and then build again. So you start the year out, just trying to build your base.

Training in these phases, using this periodization methodology, and training these phases in blocks becomes very important. And that's when a coach becomes adds value. If you've got some sort of background in training, I would still recommend that you go off and get a coach, whether it’s online or in-person to learn more about programming and training blocks.

Going back to what I was saying earlier about peaking too early and ruining upcoming races, I’ve got it completely wrong for athletes on a few occasions including for myself. Peaking is more of an art than a science.

We are always trying to get that last 1% out of your body. And it's a risk. It's a very, very big risk. And my podcast partner, Chris Brack, who is currently an Australian Masters 400m Champion, has dialed this in and he just knows when to back off. He's like, I'm not going to get any more out of my body now, so I’m just going to back off. We’ve all learned that the hard way, knowing that turning up on race day, putting your spikes on, and getting on the blocks is half the battle.

I've competed against athletes that were far better than I was and they just couldn't get to the start line because of injury.

I coached a very, very good 800-meter runner, there's a great video of him online, at Run Fast. It’s a very good video of Mike running a 400, 300 meter session. He ran a 400 at his 800-meter race pace or slightly faster. Then he has a very short rest and he runs a 300. So he's running slightly faster than his 800 meter first 400m race pace if that makes sense to you non-sprinters. So the first 400 meters of his 800, he's gonna run the 400m slightly faster because he's going to have a one-minute rest and then go again. Now, the reason you don't run two 400m is because that'll just ring your system out completely. And typically on race day, he'll have that extra hundred meters in him just because we've done so much work. His endurance base was amazing. We were just trying to dial in the speed. He was in such great shape. 10 days out from the race and the specific times that I gave him and he overran the session. I mean, overran it like crazy. I think it was two seconds under his four 400m target time and his 300 was way under as well.

Well, it completely destroyed him. He never recovered from that session and his central nervous system was shot. The following week when he ran the 800m State Titles, I think he ran one or two seconds outside of his target times. It was like a training run for him. He had nothing in his legs. We knew he was dialed in to run a sub-two minute 800m and probably break the state record. He was getting very close to that national record at the time, based on his training times.

This was my fault, I gave him a session that needed to be run perfectly or it would ruin him, so close to an event, he overran the session and this is when you need to know your athlete well and know when to pull them back. In all honesty, after he ran that first 400, we were pretty excited to see what he could do. I shouldn't have let him run the second 300 because it destroyed him. Anyway, I just wanted to touch on this training block.

Getting back to Hyrox, as it's still a new event, I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out the right methodology to train for it.

The great thing about Hyrox is because the actual stations aren't that complex, I don't think you need to practice them a lot. I still believe in spending time on the ergs, rowing, and ski ergs to get your technique right and possibly getting a technique coach to become efficient.

I think you need to spend sufficient time practicing the burpees, lunges, and wall balls. I have extremely tight hips, so I've had to play around with modifying the burpee technique, particularly after running. I was so fatigued after the burpees and blew up.

For periodization for a Hyrox event, you need to start with a long slow endurance base. I would use a good 10K running program to build my base first.

Here is the program I’m following at the moment. 10K running program 4 days per week. Broken into: 2 x 6-7km easy days, 1 x stride repeats or tempo day, and 1 x long run day between 60-90mins.

I'm still doing strength training, but my focus is on my endurance and building a good base because the recovery between the stations and being able to run makes up more than 50% of the event.

The next phase is the strength phase, you will still keep up your running but the focus is on strength. This isn't just going from running 4 days per week to no running. You might go from running four days a week, for six or eight weeks, in the endurance phase to running three days a week or even two days a week. Slightly longer runs but slower to keep your aerobic base topped up. During this phase, you will focus on your strength, particularly pushing the sled. If you're not a strong athlete you have to move 155 kilos for men and 105kg for women. So you will need some pretty good strength to push and pull the sled.

You will need to make sure you've got some leg strength and some erg work and some compromised running work as well where you go from running straight to the ergs. You do this by running on the treadmill and going to the erg and then back.

The next phase and there is no science-based around this, you would move into more of a specific phase where you start doing very specific Hyrox movements.

You're still keeping your strength sessions here but they have been cut back or combined with the specific Hyrox session or with your running sessions. You're still probably doing two days a week running in this phase. So you might start doing HITT sessions two or more days per week. And then one day a week, it's a combination of strength and specific movements. So you might still do some heavy sled pushes and some heavy deadlifts combined with some ski, erg, and wall balls. Then on one of the other days, it may just be the ergs and wall balls and burpees. You can virtually make up any combination of Hyrox exercises.

So a training week may look like this:

Day 1 - Long run 40mins to 1 hour

Day 2 - 45 min HITT session combining Hyrox stations and running

Day 3 - Rest active recovery - Zone 2 cycling 45minutes

Day 4 - Strength combined with ergs for rounds

Day 5 - 45min - 60min run

Day 6 - Hyrox Sim. Do the first 4 Runs and Stations for time

Day 7 - Zone 2, 45 minutes and Upper Body Strength

Hyrox times have dropped quickly over the last few years and we appear to be getting down to the pointy end of the times now. The Hyrox CEO thinks it's going to be a while before someone can go under 50 minutes. But who knows? Hunter McIntyre is just barreling ahead at the moment. He made an interesting comment a while ago where he said he believes that to be in the top 10 in the world you need to be a 32 or 33-minute, 10k runner and you need to have a very good 2k ski erg time.

Anyway, there’s a bit of an idea about how I think about programming for a Hyrox event. Because it's such a new sport, I don't think anyone has worked out the perfect training plan yet and it will be a little different for every individual. But if you apply the basic training block principles they will put you in a position to complete your first Hyrox or improve your times.

I intend to put out a 12-week program based on the above but it will presume you have some training base. If you're coming off no base, I might put an entire beginners program together as well, but that'll be a little bit longer. You probably need a good 12 months to train for one of these events. But if you've already got a good base and you're coming from a background of running or cycling, I think a 12-week program would look something like, 4 weeks of running, obviously, some strength days in there as well, moving into a more strength based block, keeping some running in there, then going into the specific exercises and using the ergs and compromised running.

Train Hard and watch this space for more Hyrox information.