Mental Fatigue and Your HYROX Performance

Endurance sports (including HYROX) require not just physical stamina, but also deep mental toughness. When your mind feels drained, it becomes extremely difficult to push your body to its limits. Mental fatigue can sabotage your training and race day performance if not properly managed.

In this article, we’ll explore the link between mental fatigue and endurance in depth, discuss how to recognise the signs of a fatigued mind, and provide tips for building mental resilience in your training and racing.

What is Mental Fatigue?

Mental fatigue refers to a subjective feeling of tiredness related to cognitive activity. 

Some common symptoms of mental fatigue include:

– Difficulty concentrating or focusing

– Reduced motivation and feelings of mental lethargy

– Increased irritability and moodiness

– Easily distracted

– Poor impulse control

– Diminished performance on cognitive tasks requiring vigilance or quick reactions

– Lacking enjoyment or feelings of disengagement from your sport

– Increased perception of effort at the same pace or power output

– Feeling mentally drained after training sessions

Mental fatigue can occur after long periods of intense mental work, like studying, taking a difficult exam, or working long hours under pressure. But it can also creep up during endurance training and events when you’ve been pushing your body for many miles or hours. The constant need to monitor pacing, nutrition, and technique can tax your brain’s capacity.

How Mental Fatigue Impacts Endurance

Here are some of the key ways in which mental fatigue can negatively impact endurance performance:

Diminished Focus and Concentration

Staying focused is critical for your best performance. But when your mind is fatigued, your concentration easily wavers. In HYROX, a loss of focus often leads to costly mistakes like running an incorrect number of laps or doing the stations in the wrong order.  Additionally, you may space out, react slower, or struggle to maintain proper technique. 

Increased Perception of Effort

As your mind tires, everything feels harder than normal. Even at the exact same level of actual physical exertion, a tired brain strongly amplifies your subjective feeling of effort. This skewed perception wears you down much faster.

In a conversation with sports psychologist, Josephine Perry, on the Rox Lyfe podcast, she explained how, for most people, when we really think we are at our limits of fitness during a race, we are actually only 70% of the way there.  There is often much more we can tap into.  To do that we need to be clear on our motivation and reduce our perception of effort. However, if we are suffering not just with physical fatigue but also mental fatigue, tapping into the remaining 30% becomes much more difficult to do (because our motivation drops, and our perception of effort is so much higher).

For a more in depth look at perception of effort, check this article.

Impaired Judgement and Decision Making

Fitness racing requires smart decision making in areas such as optimal pacing, fuelling, hydration, and gear choices. But a fatigued mind degrades your judgement, impulse control, and ability to appreciate long-term consequences. You are much more susceptible to making foolish, in-the-moment, decisions that jeopardise your overall performance or safety. A fatigued brain has much less inhibition.

Tips for Building Mental Endurance

It’s worth appreciating that, just like the body, the brain can also be trained to build stamina, strength, and resilience. Here are some key strategies for developing greater mental endurance:

Fuel Your Brain

Your brain depends on steady fuel just like your muscles. Be diligent about optimal nutrition and hydration to combat mental fatigue. Consume sufficient amounts of carbohydrates and calories for your activity levels and avoid dehydration. 

If you need more help with your nutrition for HYROX, check out our personalised nutrition calls here.

Train Your Brain

In the same way that physical training conditions your body, your brain needs conditioning too. Regular practice strengthens mental skills like concentration, motivation, focus, and composure. Here are some great ways to train your brain:

– Visualisation: Picture yourself staying mentally strong during tough sections of your event. See yourself remaining focused, motivated, and emotionally resilient no matter the physical distress. 

– Mindfulness Meditation: Learn to be fully immersed in the present moment, without judgement, during training. Notice thoughts and physical sensations without getting wrapped up in them. Refocus when the mind wanders.

– Concentration Drills: Choose a focal point like your breathing, counting strides or pedal strokes, or watching the road ahead. See how long you can zone in during workouts before you get distracted. Switch focal points periodically. 

– Brain Training: Use cognitive tasks like online brain training games and mental puzzles to sharpen concentration skills.

Know Your Mental Rhythms

Pay attention to when you most typically experience mental fatigue and schedule your toughest physical training when your brain is freshest. For example, avoid doing your running intervals right after long workdays.

Monitor Stress

Outside stresses in your work and personal life sap mental energy. Actively manage commitments and maintain a healthy life balance. Do your best to prevent non-training stresses from draining your brain.

Get Proper Rest and Recovery

Sleep, rest days, and recovery breaks are crucial to let your brain recharge fully. Don’t overtrain or skimp on recovery time between hard sessions. Allow your mind to bounce back fully.  A taper period for an event should be used not just for your physical health, but also mentally.  If you spend less time at the gym in a week leading up to your race, don’t fill that time with other stressors that may mentally fatigue you.

Avoid Perfectionism

Let go of perfectionistic tendencies and unrealistic expectations of yourself. Reframe setbacks positively as opportunities to grow stronger. Don’t waste brain power dwelling on what you cannot change (check our article on Stoicism in Sport for more on this area). 

Reframe Pain and Discomfort

The mindset you adopt toward physical discomfort impacts how mentally draining it is. Reframing painful or challenging miles as opportunities to get tougher can make them feel easier. Adopt a mindset of excitement to thrive.

Use Uplifting Feedback

Music, podcasts, audiobooks, and encouraging self-talk provide mental stimulation to distract your brain from fatigue. This can certainly be beneficial during tough training sessions.  However, also be careful not to rely on them too heavily, especially if it’s not something you are going to be able to use on race day. 

Lean On Social Support

Training partners and supportive crowds can lift you up mentally when things start to feel draining. Surround yourself with positive people who boost your mindset, and on race day consider asking friends of family to be situated (with a smiling face!) at key points to give you a boost when you need it most.

Simulate Race Fatigue in Training

Purposely train in ways that replicate the mental fatigue you’ll experience on race day. Do tough workouts on short sleep, after long work days, or while already depleted, to practice pushing through.