2024 was one of the busiest years of my life, completing a full-time MSc, working as a strength & conditioning coach/endurance coach and trying to maintain my fitness on the bike, running and in the gym while on a sports scholarship. I'm not complaining one bit, I love being busy, but, I love being in great shape as an athlete and that's something that eluded me in 2024. I had to accept that being in great shape was not possible with the hours I had to train (approx 6-7 per week). So, with the MSc finishing at the beginning of December, more hours became free each week to regain my form for 2025.
Something I did towards the latter half of 2024 was begin doing Hyrox simulations in a local gym with a friend who got me in to the sport. It's pretty much an hour or so of suffering at threshold, depending on what way you pace it. These sessions reminded me of the feeling of suffering I got from the bike, except in a shorter amount of time, which was really helpful with the limited time I had to train last year.
For any cyclist reading, you know the feeling of lactate build up in a race and that point where the gas is on and you're hurting for a long time. I love that feeling, but I knew in 2024 if I was going to race on the bike, I wouldn't be able to compete on 6 hours a week, especially at my category in cycling which is A1. So Hyrox was a bit of a blessing in disguise and it gave me something to train for.
Don't get me wrong, Hyrox is not a sport where doing 5/6 hours a week will give you great returns, I'm 100% sure that if you really want to compete at this, you also need to be doing upwards of 10 to 11 hours per week and that's what I've started doing, I'll take you on the journey towards Hyrox Glasgow, where I'm racing in Doubles with a friend who got me in to the sport.
We're aiming for a sub 60 minute race in Glasgow, which should be a realistic but challenging target as we've just broke the sub 60 minute at the weekend doing a time of 59 minutes and 51 seconds in our gym. However, running on a treadmill vs running on the ground is a different ball game.
Due to my background as an athlete and coach in sports science, S&C and endurance, I take my training seriously, in terms of planning, execution and recovery. I'll start to include more of my training on the @obnperformance social media sites to give you an insight on how to really take your training seriously both physically and mentally if you want to reach your performance potential.
The Current Training Block
The weekly training load has been 11-12 hours of running, strength and conditioning and cycling since mid-December until now. Again looking at it from a coaches perspective, you need to know what the main components of the sport you're coaching and competing in are, which is done by a needs analysis. I did this for Hyrox using the format I follow for a needs analysis as a coach, which is from the NSCA CSCS book. Here we're looking at an athlete assessment, exercise selection, training frequency, exercise order, training load, volume and rest periods.
Hyrox is a sport where your aerobic capacity is important, being able to run at threshold is vital. However, also being strong enough to push a 150+kg sled among a number of other areas. As an endurance athlete for the last 10+ years, I know my aerobic capacity is going to help, even though my VO2 Max was low last year at 56 mL/kg/min while I was training 6 hours per week, the year before it was 71 mL/kg/min when I was racing on the bike each weekend and training 12-20 hour weeks. I know I can get close to this VO2 Max within the next 2 months of consistent training.
My current Hyrox strength training block for January is focused on hypertrophy and building lean mass in my strength sessions. I've kept one power session in there to maintain neuromuscular efficiency. Putting on between 5-6kg of muscle in the past 8 months, now at almost 69kg. Competing in Hyrox with my previous endurance physique and body mass would not have been optimal, trying to push a 150+kg sled at 59kg wouldn't work well, particularly as the muscle fatigues as the race progresses in the other strength based stations. Of course I've also kept running part of my training program, last week totalled 40km of running, including 4 sessions (Threshold run, Hyrox Sim, X2 Endurance Runs). I'll keep the running at approximately 40-50km per week until approx 10 days before the event.
This hypertrophy block is important, as increasing the cross-sectional area (CSA) of muscle will mean an increase in the amount of muscle fibers that can be recruited, as muscle force is directly proportional to CSA. A larger CSA means more contractile proteins (actin and myosin). We know that Power = Force × Velocity and since force increases with CSA, power has the potential to increase, provided that velocity or movement speed is not significantly compromised. However, while increasing CSA can enhance power, it's not the only determinant. Training power more specifically will follow in the next block of training and having increased the muscle CSA, this will help when going to do so. Also maintaining one power session per week in my training block will help maintain previous adaptations.
There you go, that's the reasoning behind my current training block. One thing I think is vital in a training program is, training with intent. You need to know the reason why you're training your body in a certain way for a specific event.
Hyrox Glasgow is in early March so there's a good amount of time to sharpen the form. The next 2 weeks are high volume and then I've to head to the US for a week at the end of January, which will be used as a de-load week, trying to fit in sessions in the hotel or runs outside. However we'll deal with that when we come to it, for now its full gas!
Next time,
Graham
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