Building your engine for HYROX

Layer one: the aerobic base

The foundation is easy, steady work: running, cycling, rowing or skiing at an effort where you can hold a conversation. It feels almost too easy, which is why people skip it. But this is where the biggest long-term improvements come from, as your heart, blood vessels and muscles adapt to deliver and use oxygen more efficiently.

Aim for most of your weekly conditioning to sit here. For many people training for HYROX, that means two or three easy sessions of 30 to 60 minutes. Longer sessions of 60 to 90 minutes now and then are valuable if you have the time.

If you use heart rate, keep these sessions comfortably below threshold. The guide to heart rate training for HYROX explains how to set that up.

Layer two: threshold

Threshold is roughly the hardest effort you can sustain for about an hour. Training around it raises the pace you can hold before fatigue builds quickly, which is almost exactly what HYROX asks of you on the runs.

• 3 x 10 minutes at threshold, 2 minutes easy between.
• 5 x 1 km runs at slightly faster than your HYROX run pace, 90 seconds rest.
• 4 x 6 minutes on a rower or bike at a comfortably hard effort, 2 minutes easy.
• 20 to 30 minutes continuous at a steady, comfortably hard effort.

Threshold sessions should feel hard but controlled. You should finish thinking you could have done one more rep.

The most common mistake is turning threshold sessions into races. If the last interval is much slower than the first, you started too hard. Even splits across every rep are the goal, just as they are in the race itself.

Layer three: short, hard intervals

Above threshold sit the short, hard efforts that push your maximum aerobic capacity and teach your body to cope with, and recover from, big spikes in effort. In HYROX, those spikes come on the SkiErg, the sleds and the burpee broad jumps.

• 8 x 1 minute hard on an air bike, 1 minute easy.
• 6 x 3 minutes hard running or rowing, 2 minutes easy.
• 10 x 30 seconds hard, 90 seconds easy, on any machine.

These sessions are demanding. One a week is plenty for most people, and in some weeks you can skip them altogether in favour of threshold work.

Running, bikes, rowers and ski machines

Your engine does not care which machine you use. Heart and lungs adapt to effort, whether you are running, cycling, rowing or skiing. That gives you a powerful tool: you can build a lot of aerobic fitness with less impact on your legs by mixing running with other machines.

Air bikes are particularly useful because they use both arms and legs and allow very high efforts with no impact. Rowers and ski machines also train the specific movements you will use in the race. Mixing them in helps you train more without piling up running injuries.

The catch is that running fitness is partly specific. Your legs need to get used to the impact and rhythm of running, so machines should add to your running, not replace it. For most people, two or three runs a week plus one or two machine-based engine sessions is a good balance. The guide to compromised running shows how to join running and stations together.

Putting it into a week

A balanced week for someone training five times might look like this:

1. Easy run, 40 minutes.
2. Strength session.
3. Threshold session, running or rowing.
4. Easy bike or row, 30 to 45 minutes, or rest.
5. HYROX session with stations and runs, including some harder efforts.

Progress by adding a little time to your easy sessions and a rep or two to your threshold work every week or two, with a lighter week every third or fourth.

Be patient. Aerobic fitness builds over months, not weeks. The first few weeks of easy sessions can feel pointless, but the people who stick with them are the ones whose run splits stay steady in the second half of the race while everyone around them fades.

Engine classes

Conditioning is much easier to stick with in a group, where the energy of the room pushes you through the hard intervals. Lycan Strength runs Engine classes on Monday at 7pm, Wednesday at 6pm and Friday at 6am, described by the gym as workouts that build lasting cardiovascular health, plus Lycan Shred on Friday at 6:30pm. All are on the class timetable, and the guide to conditioning classes explained covers what these kinds of sessions usually involve.