I decided to give this a crack as at my age increasing gym training is more and more important. At a certain age you just start losing muscle mass, strength, agility and expolisivity. Last season I did very little ‘triathlon’ training and managed to perform nearly the same as i did in past years partly because I increased my strength training and played other sports in the winter. I’m sort of a special guinea pig because I have so many years of distance training and can get my endurance condition up pretty quick. But this holds true with most older endurance athletes.
So doing Hyrox adds a goal to the gym training which makes it a little more fun and specific. If you don’t know what Hyrox is look it up – it’s TOUGH! To make a long story short my friend and past training partner Gabriel Björlin (who has one of the fastest IM times in the world for a U20 kid -8:37- and has been a gym rat for the past few year) took the bait to train up for it as well. We saw the race (in Stockholm in December) was filling up fast so I panicked and accidentally signed us up for Elite doubles (everything else was full anyway). In the Elite category the weights are heavier on the sled push/pull, farmer carry (32kg in each hand!!), wall balls and the sandbag lunges. Fortunately though we do all the runs together we can split the distance on the exercises which makes it somewhat manageable.
We’re coming at it from different angles. Gabbe is powerhouse now but has to get back his V02 and running form whereas I need more strength but seem to be able to run decent after doing the exercises hard. But I am finding that though doing a little extra heavier lifting helps, just doing the exercises at different weights and intensities often is giving me the best gains. If you think about it if you’ve never done a lot of triathlon you got to swim, bike and run a lot not only for fitness but for muscle memory. So learning to do the exercises, finding good teknique and efficiency seems to be the best way to improve.
It’s been a lot of fun doing this type of training for a change and I feel the adaptation week after week and am constantly sore as xxxx but the body feels more stable and robust than it has for a long time. Really looking forward to seeing how we manage at the competition.
