Of course, everyone differs in their approach to HYROX, and how seriously they treat their performance. It is, after all, a “sport for everyone”. But there are a segment of competitors who train reasonably relentlessly, pushing themselves to the limit in pursuit of faster finish times. However, it’s certainly not uncommon for some of those athletes to hit a plateau in their performance.
Lack of progress can be disheartening. Athletes might question if they’ve just reached their genetic potential or know they have more in them but no idea what could be holding them back.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the factors that may contribute to an athlete’s stagnation in HYROX…
(note: this is definitely not an exhaustive list!)
Not Making Easy Days Easy Enough
Which leaves you too fatigued to go as hard as you truly need to on your hard days. Think about 1 or 2 key sessions each week which you really want to perform as well as possible in, and structure your training week to help facilitate that.
Avoiding the Work You Don’t Want to Do
That station you’re really good at – are you spending too much time on it? The thing you need to do most – have you been avoiding it?
Racing Too Often (Taper and Recovery)
If you’re racing frequently and tapering your training down in advance of all those races, as well as needing a few days to recover after each event, you possibly aren’t having sufficiently long training blocks to actually make any progress.
Racing Too Often (Mindset)
HYROX can be tough not just physically but also mentally. If you’re racing frequently, it’s possible you could be mentally fatigued. Are you ready to go to ‘that place’ in a race, which truly hurts, if you’re racing too often? Are you able to really max out in your training sessions if you’re trying to race (and peak) too frequently?
Not Prioritising Races
As a natural follow on from the last two points, it is worth saying that you likely can race reasonably regularly, but you should prioritise certain races (a small number each season) that are most important to you (your “A races”). It is those that you taper for, periodise your training to peak for, put all your mental energy into, etc. And other races can be treated more like training runs. Without doing this, it can be very easy to plateau in your performance.
For athletes towards the top level of the sport, they may choose one “A Race” to try and qualify for the HYROX World Championships, and then their other race is the World Championships themselves. Other races are given a lower priority.
Not Measuring Performance
Sure, you track your race times. But how about your training sessions? Are you timing your running splits, for example, or weights lifted, during training? When you revisit the session again in the future, do you have a target to be beating? It’s possible to feel like you are training hard, but if you’re not progressing in training, it’s unlikely you’ll progress when it comes to race day.
Too Much Intensity
If you constantly train at a high intensity, it can lead to injuries and be difficult to recover from. Poor recovery can then mean you struggle to train with sufficient intensity in future sessions when you really need to.
Too Little Intensity
HYROX is tough. If you only train high volume / low intensity, when it comes to race day, you may be completely unprepared for the intensity of the event. There’s so much talk these days online about the benefits of easy Zone 2 training, and whilst that has its place, if you only train like that for HYROX, you’ll soon regret it!
Lack of Prioritisation
There are so many elements to HYROX. You’ve got the running. The strength work. Muscular endurance. Power. If you try to train EVERYTHING it can mean you don’t end up getting better at anything. You often need prioritisation. For example, if it’s your running that needs most work, doing tonnes of lunges and squats during training may leave your legs too fried to perform as well as they need to for your running sessions. Of course, there is a balance that needs to be found – you can’t ONLY train running – but some prioritisation (and load management) is often needed.
Lack of Specificity / Skill Development
Many athletes make the mistake of only training the HYROX movements. But it is also possible to go too far the other way and lack specificity in your training. As you approach a race in particular, it is worth ensuring you are taking into account the demands and movements of the event. Dial in your wall ball technique. Work on the burpee broad jumps. Practice your compromised running. The race does have its own, unique demands, and if you aren’t preparing for those, then you may struggle to progress
Not Analysing Race Data
Failure to look at the wealth of data after your HYROX event could mean you end up focusing your training on areas that you don’t need to improve on, or where the potential time improvements are minimal. Could you be spending too much time on your sled work, for example, which might bring about a 20 second improvement in your overall finishing time, when really it’s your running where the lowest hanging fruit is? Using your race data to prioritise your training can really pay dividends.
Lack of Consistency in Training
Maybe some weeks you train well. Maybe you do that for 4 weeks in a row. But then you go on holiday. Or get injured. Or ill. Or work gets really busy so you miss several training sessions. Of course, this is normal. Life happens. But if you don’t have enough consistency in your training, then it can be difficult to progress. If you haven’t been progressing as you would want, ask yourself honestly if you have had several good weeks of training stacked on top of each other. If not, question why that might be, and could you take steps to resolve that going forward.
Expecting Too Much Too Soon
Adaptations can take time. Once you have been training for a while, for most people, improved levels of fitness / performance don’t happen rapidly. Sure, sometimes when you first come into HYROX you can get faster from race to race. But much of that is not just from improved fitness but also pacing, specificity to the race demands, experience, etc. If it feels like your performance has been plateauing, it could be worth questioning whether you are expecting too much too soon. This can be even more likely as you get older, where physical adaptations become even harder to come by.
Not all Races are Equal
Even though the structure of each HYROX is the same each time, it is worth appreciating that there are differences in the courses. The layout of a course, how busy the course is, and how heavy the sleds feel can affect how quick the times are on the day. If you don’t progress from one race to the next, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your performance hasn’t improved – it could simply mean that the courses you are comparing against weren’t equal. One way of understanding if this may be the case is by looking at your finishing position within your age group / division. Its not perfect but at least gives you a rough idea of how you performed relative to others.
Poor Race Tactics
A huge amount can be gained from experience in racing in HYROX. There is often time left on the table when you are new to the sport, which makes time improvements easier to come by in future races. That said, you do need to learn from your experiences. For example, many people will start too fast in their first HYROX and slow down considerably throughout the race. But if you don’t learn from this, and continue to repeat your errors, your performance can suffer, and you might not see the time improvements you crave.
Not Eating Enough
People training for HYROX are often putting in a lot of work. And this work needs fuelling! However, the nutritional demands of HYROX often differ from what many athletes are accustomed to, particularly those with a background focused solely on body composition goals. Those individuals are typically mindful of limiting their caloric and carbohydrate intake for aesthetic purposes. But when training for HYROX you need to eat enough to fuel your sessions (and adaptations to the training). This means eating enough calories and enough carbohydrates in particular. To read up more on common nutrition mistakes in HYROX check out this article.
Lack of Sleep
It’s not just calories you need to help fuel your performance though. You also need to sleep. Its during your sleep that your body gets to rest, repair, recover and adapt. If you aren’t getting a sufficient amount of quality sleep, you can very easily stagnate in your performance.
External Stressors
Training is a stress on your body. But so is work related stress. Or relationship stress. Lack of sleep. Unhealthy diet. And lots more. If you have a lot of non-training related stresses in your life, it can leave you physically and mentally fatigued for your workouts, and adversely affect any adaptations – thus impacting your ability to improve your performance on race day.
If you need some more help with your training, check out this article on common HYROX training mistakes, and this guide to HYROX training fundamentals. We do also offer 12-week training plans (for singles or doubles), and personalised coaching plans.
