Highway to HYROX Episode 4: Getting Stronger for the Stations

But I did want to talk about the strength training portion.

So the theme for this episode or this portion of the episode is that, or the thing I wanted to kind of emphasize here is that high rocks really requires you to be strong enough to move the load and fit enough to repeat the effort and prepared to run after.

So you There's a little few elements here that we really have to be aware of with high rocks, making the assumption that most people listening to this episode two are coming maybe from more of an endurance background.

You know, maybe I don't think most people listening to our podcast are coming from like a strength background, I'm assuming, because I think if you were coming from more of a strength background, your priorities would be maybe a little bit different in terms of what how you're structuring your training.

Like somebody coming back from more of a strength background may do some minimal strength or maybe they're focusing more on the endurance strength portion or just the actual race specific things that you would be doing in the race because you already have a background in strength.

But because there's so much running, that person may be focusing more on the actual run portion.

Running, active running and doing the running, the threshold and more volume in running and trying to get better at that.

Whereas somebody coming from an endurance background like myself is really focusing a lot on the high rock specific things.

stations, being comfortable with running after with fatigue legs after some of those heavy lifting or heavier stations like the sled push and sled pull and having the strength to be able to do those for a bit of time.

It's not like you're just pushing the sled for like a short distance.

It's a longer distance.

So you want to make sure you're prepared for that and the The stronger you are, the more able you're to be able to do that without overly fatiguing yourself.

So the stations require force production and cardiovascular fitness because you're not only doing them... for a short period of time or for a long period of time, they're kind of heavy.

So you have to have kind of this combination.

And greater strength can create like, so the more strong you are, the more you have like a strength reserve.

This is like just this idea that like as your maximum capacity increases, the more you can kind of handle the load of what they're requiring of you for the race, right? So, for instance, like thinking of it this way, if you're able to push more load on the sled push, then when you, you know, get to something like the race, you're able to do that for the longer duration without it like totally taking so much out of you that maybe you're not able to feel like you have your full capacity at the other stations or you're just totally wiped out because that was so much, you know, you put so much effort into that.

Because maybe you haven't practiced it or you're not strong enough.

And so you're just doing everything you can to push that load.

And it's very, very difficult, but you do it.

But then afterwards, you're just totally spent.

So the stronger you are, the more you're able to push the load.

And it doesn't, and it's... easier, so to speak.

So it's not so hard so that you can kind of go on to the next thing and you're not totally spent after trying to do those strength-based stations.

And so I think that's kind of what that is essentially just making it the effort more manageable.

The stronger you are, the more manageable the effort is, the easier it may feel.