The MARCHON HYROX Blueprint

THE MARCHON HYROX BLUEPRINT

One of the biggest mistakes I see in HYROX training is people trying to train like they're four weeks out from a race, all year round.

Every Saturday is a simulation. Every run is compromised. Every session needs a sled, a SkiErg and enough fatigue to make you question your life choices.

And I understand why.

If you're training for HYROX, surely the more your training looks like HYROX, the better?

Not necessarily.

In my opinion, one of the most important parts of preparing properly for HYROX is understanding that your training should change throughout the year.

What you need 20 weeks away from a race is very different from what you need four weeks out.

Almost every serious sport understands this. Football teams don't play matches 12 months a year. Marathon runners don't spend the entire year running at race pace. Athletes don't try to peak every single week.

There are periods where you build physical qualities, periods where training becomes more specific to the sport, and periods where you prepare to actually perform.

HYROX should be no different.

At MARCHON, we broadly break that process into three phases:

10 WEEKS OFF-SEASON → 10 WEEKS SPECIFIC → 4–6 WEEKS PEAK → RACE

Now, those aren't magic numbers. Your body doesn't know you've just entered week 11 and suddenly demand compromised running.

It's simply a framework we use to change the emphasis of your training as you move closer to competition.

Early on, we want to build the athlete.

Then we want to build the HYROX athlete.

Finally, we want to build the performance.

Same athlete. Same sport. But a very different training problem at each stage.

10 WEEKS OFF-SEASON

BUILD THE ATHLETE

The further away you are from competition, the more freedom you have with your training.

This is the period where we can take a step away from constantly trying to replicate the race and spend some time developing the physical qualities that actually underpin your performance.

We want to get you stronger. We want to improve your aerobic base and running ability. We want to build tissue capacity, improve movement quality and spend time addressing weaknesses that might be difficult to work on when everything becomes more race-specific.

You'll still run. You'll still Ski and Row. You'll still push sleds and perform the movements you'll eventually see on race day.

But we don't need to combine everything together just because that's how HYROX works.

If I want to make you stronger, sometimes the best thing I can do is let you train strength without exhausting you first.

If I want to make you a better runner, sometimes you need to just run.

If I want to improve your aerobic capacity, I don't necessarily need to put burpees in the middle of it.

That might sound obvious, but it's very easy with HYROX to fall into the trap of thinking a session is only specific or valuable if it contains multiple parts of the race.

It isn't.

Sometimes the most effective thing we can do is isolate a quality, give you the opportunity to actually develop it, and then worry about combining everything later.

Build the individual qualities before constantly asking yourself to express all of them together.

That's the off-season.

10 WEEKS SPECIFIC

BUILD THE HYROX ATHLETE

Once we've spent time developing those individual qualities, we can start connecting them.

You've built strength. You've improved your running. You've developed your aerobic capacity.

Now the question changes.

Can you express those qualities when you're fatigued?

This is where training starts to look more recognisably like HYROX.

You'll see more compromised running. More Erg and station combinations. More HYROX-specific strength. More stations performed under fatigue. More work around HYROX intensity and longer efforts where you're learning to repeat output.

We're gradually removing the clean environment you had during the off-season and asking you to use those physical qualities when other things are going on.

But there's an important distinction here.

We're still training. We're not constantly testing.

You don't need to do a full HYROX simulation every weekend to get better at HYROX.

A simulation can be useful. It can tell us where you're at, expose weaknesses and give you experience of the demands of the event. But once we know those things, repeatedly testing them isn't necessarily the best way to improve them.

If your sled is a weakness, I don't need to make you complete an entire HYROX every week just so you can practise pushing a sled when tired.

We can create that demand in a much more controlled way.

That's important because it allows us to manipulate volume, intensity, recovery and fatigue while still progressing the quality we're trying to develop.

Build first. Then integrate.

4–6 WEEKS PEAK

BUILD THE PERFORMANCE

Now we're getting close to race day.

At this point, I'm not trying to reinvent you as an athlete. We're not going to suddenly build an enormous aerobic base or dramatically increase your strength four weeks before you race.

That work should already have been done.

The priority now becomes taking the fitness you've built and making sure you can express it in the environment you're actually going to need it.

Specificity goes up.

Running becomes more connected to stations. Race pace becomes more important. Race loads become more important. Transitions matter. Pacing matters. The order of movements matters. Race execution matters.

We're trying to remove some of the unknowns.

You should start developing a really good understanding of what different parts of your race are going to feel like. 

How hard can you run into a station? 

How quickly can you settle once you leave it? Where can you push? 

Where do you need to be patient? 

What does your race pace actually feel like when you've already accumulated fatigue?

Those are questions we don't need to answer 20 weeks out.

But we definitely want answers to them when you're standing on the start line.

Then, as race day gets even closer, overall training volume starts to come down and fatigue needs to be managed.

Because there's no prize for winning training two weeks before your race.

You can have the best fitness you've ever had, but if you're carrying a huge amount of fatigue into race week, you're not going to be able to express it.

We want you arriving on the start line fit, specific and fresh enough to actually show what you've built.

WHAT DOES THIS ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

The easiest way to understand all of this is to take one movement and follow it through the three phases.

Let's use the sled push.

The sled can exist across the entire training cycle. We don't suddenly introduce it six weeks before your race.

What changes is the context around it.

OFF-SEASON → SLED

Let's say we're 20 weeks away from your race and I want to make you better at pushing a sled.

I don't necessarily need you to run 1km before you touch it.

In fact, that might make the session worse.

If the quality I'm trying to develop is strength and force production, I want you fresh enough to actually produce some force.

So we might simply do:

25m Sled Push
Full recovery
Repeat

That's it.

No running beforehand. No SkiErg to spike your heart rate. No burpees afterwards.

Not particularly sexy. Probably won't get many Instagram saves. But it gives us a very good opportunity to actually make you better at pushing the sled.

We can focus on your position, technique, strength and force production. We can give you proper recovery and ask for high-quality work each time.

We're building the sled.

SPECIFIC → ERG + SLED

Now let's move forward in the training cycle.

We've spent time building the strength required for the sled, but HYROX obviously doesn't allow you to arrive at it completely fresh.

So we might progress the session to:

350m Ski
25m Sled Push
Rest + Repeat

The sled hasn't changed.

But the problem we're asking you to solve has.

Now you're arriving at the sled with an elevated heart rate and fatigue already in the system. You're having to control your breathing, find your position and produce force without the luxury of being completely fresh.

Now we're asking:

Can you express the strength you built when you're fatigued?

That's a much more HYROX-specific question.

And importantly, I haven't needed to make you do an entire race simulation to ask it.

We've taken the physical quality we developed in the off-season and started placing it into an environment that looks more like the sport.

We're building the HYROX sled.

PEAK → RUN + SLED

Now we're getting close to race day, so specificity increases again.

This time we might use:

1km Run
25m Sled Push
Rest + Repeat

Now we're getting much closer to what you're actually going to experience.

You're not preparing for a sled push in isolation anymore. You're preparing to run into the sled, push it under fatigue and eventually run back out of it.

That changes things.

Race load matters. Race pace matters. Your pacing into the station matters. How quickly you can get into position matters. How you manage your effort on the sled matters because you've still got to run when you're finished.

At this point, we're not necessarily trying to make you dramatically stronger on the sled.

We're teaching you how to use the strength you've already built in the exact environment where you're going to need it.

We're building the race-day sled.

SAME MOVEMENT. DIFFERENT PURPOSE.

This is probably the simplest way to think about the entire Blueprint.

OFF-SEASON
Sled

↓

SPECIFIC
Erg → Sled

↓

PEAK
Run → Sled

↓

RACE
Perform.

The movement hasn't changed.

The athlete hasn't changed.

What has changed is the purpose of the session and the context we're placing that movement into.

That's periodisation in its simplest form.

As race day gets closer, specificity goes up.

But specificity has to be built on something.

You haven't replaced strength with HYROX training. You haven't replaced aerobic development with race preparation. You've taken those qualities and progressively taught yourself to express them in an environment that looks more and more like the sport.

And that's why I don't think trying to make every session look like HYROX is the answer.

THE BIG MISTAKE: TRYING TO PEAK ALL YEAR

If every Saturday is a simulation, every run is compromised, every session is race pace and every workout is designed to feel like HYROX, where do you go when your race is actually four weeks away?

You can't keep turning the dial up forever.

There should be a noticeable difference between how you train 24 weeks out and four weeks out.

If there isn't, you're not really building towards anything. You're just repeating the same level of specificity throughout the year and hoping that doing more of it eventually makes you better.

This is why when we're programming at MARCHON, we don't just ask:

“What's the best HYROX workout?”

I don't think that's a particularly useful question.

A brilliant session at the wrong point in someone's preparation can still be the wrong session.

The better question is:

“What does this athlete need from their training right now?”

Sometimes the answer is more strength.

Sometimes it's more running.

Sometimes it's developing your aerobic base.

Sometimes it's learning to push a sled when your legs are already cooked.

And eventually, it's putting all of those pieces together and preparing to race.

That's the difference.

Build the athlete.
Build the HYROX athlete.
Build the performance.

Then go and race.

That's the MARCHON HYROX Blueprint.