Hyrox Pro Doubles - Dropping Under 1 Hour

Trio Fitness Training
May 11
3 min read

We've been coaching endurance athletes in Obstacle Course Racing, Trail and Road Races, Hybrid events, and Tactical Fitness for a decade, but we haven't been able to make it to many Hyrox events in the last few years between busy work schedules and family life. Well, like many who have completed a Hyrox, we've caught the bug.

We just completed the Pro Doubles race in Atlanta recently. It was our first Pro Doubles event, and we were very pleased with our performance. In the past, myself (Joel) has primarily trained for longer-distance endurance events. Things like 50K trail races and Spartan Ultras, half marathon trail races, long distance Tactical events, and so on. On the flip side, Luke (co-owner and coach at TFT) has been training almost exclusively for Deka Strong events which require exactly zero running.

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At Trio Fitness Training we create custom training programs for Hybrid athletes like Hyrox athletes, Deka athletes, and more. We'd love to work with you and help you develop into the athlete you know you can be! All of our programs and coaching is done remotely, which means we can assist you no matter where you are in the world.

With that background in mind, we came in to the Atlanta race with myself in good running shape, but not great shape for the stations, and Luke in great shape for the stations, but with extremely minimal running training for quite some time now.

Both of us can improve drastically to cut our time down below 60 minutes when we do our next Hyrox (hopefully in November 2025 in Dallas). For me personally, those things listed below are what I need to focus on to make the biggest improvements for my next Hyrox.

Ski Erg pacing
Sled Push strength/speed
Sled Pull strength/speed
Continued running speed improvement

For the Ski Erg, I simply need to practice it more. I've done less than 15,000m on the Ski Erg in the last 8 months. Doing a few thousand meters per week, both at steady pacing and incorporating some higher-intensity work, will hugely benefit my form/technique and my skill and endurance on the Ski Erg so that I'm skiing at a faster average pace.

I plan to implement volume on the Ski Erg in the form of a longer duration effort around 5,000 meters followed by some higher intensity work like the following:

-All at around 80% intensity-

1,000 meters - rest 1 min

800 meters - rest 1 min

600 meters - rest 1 min

400 meters - rest 1 min

200 meters - end

Just like the Ski Erg, the Sled Push and Pull are exercises I haven't touched outside of Hyrox in close to a year. Simply incorporating heavy sled work into my routine on a regular basis will dramatically increase my speed on this station. It will look something like this:

6 x 30 meters for a 440lb Sled Push with a 1 minute rest between sets

6 x 30 meters of Hyrox-styled Sled Pulls (within a confined box space) at 340lbs with 1 minute rest.

If you haven't noticed yet, there is a pattern with my training - or the training I wasn't doing previously as Hyrox wasn't a top goal. ALL of my running training for the last 8 months has been at slower/lower effort pacing with only a handful of sessions that pushed into some moderate effort work. I've been gradually increasing my running volume, but I haven't touched high intensity work in training. The high intensity work is where a HUGE amount of "higher-end" fitness and speed are built, so once I begin to implement that training, I'll be able to see improvements in my speed and overall endurance.

I've gone through many many training cycles in the past, so I know from experience that in order to avoid injury, I need to start low when I first step into high intensity running work. I'll start with some 30, 60's for the first few workouts, then scale up to some 400 meter repeats. After several weeks of consistency there, I'll move into 800 meter repeats, and by the time November rolls around, I should be hitting mile repeats once or twice per week depending on other training factors and how well my body is handling the work.