I’ve recently realised that I am the biggest advert for my business that there is. I could spend money on ads and run big marketing campaigns which would bring attention to the business but being the owner of my small business, I reflect my business 24/7.
With that in mind, I realised I want to push myself physically in a way that if a client came to me, I would push them. Luckily, I have always been hardworking and quite consistent with my own fitness and exercise so I have a strong starting position… but theres always been a nagging feeling of ‘what if I REALLY committed? What if I treated this like I was a professional? How far could it take me?’, and I am now in a position where I can commit the time, energy and resources to doing this. My decision is to go all in and aim to be a top HYROX athlete. I want to compete at the world championships and be in the ELITE 15 category.
So whats my starting point? Well I have a big interest in HYROX and have for a while now, I love the blend of endurance with strength and considering I have been running more the past year, and have seen large improvements, combined with the fact I have a background in strength training, I think I am well placed to give this a good go. Doubt is always present with this kind of endeavour- you see how far ahead other people are and you almost see them as a separate being or you persuade yourself that they have a skill that is unattainable, something they were born with that you weren’t. I’ve been battling with these thoughts recently but I’ve also managed to take some comfort from the flip side of thinking which is the fact that they have been committed to their sport for a lot longer, they are older and therefore have more experience and fitness accumulated purely through time under tension and repetition.
There are some great role models in the sport such as Jake Dearden and Meghan Jakoby. These athletes make a lot of their training and lifestyle public and the dedication is incredible, but definitely not unachievable. It’s reassuring to see these 2 athletes, both at the top of the sport but in such different situations. Jake Dearden is in his mid to late 20s, around 5 years older than me and he is battling at the top. Whereas Megan Jakoby is in her 30s, has been involved in different sports for many years and only became a professional athlete at 31, proving that there is more time than I sometimes let myself imagine.
So why HYROX? I think a big reason is the fact that a lot of the athletes are built well, something you often don’t see in most endurance sports. This helps that I can recognise body shapes much more similar to mine than I can in sports such as cross country running where athletes benefit from being lighter and therefore often limiting the amount of unnecessary (mainly upper body) muscle.
It is also a massively growing sport and to be at the cutting edge of a sport increasing in popularity will be a great challenge and something that isn’t going to always be an option.
So whats the plan? The plan is to work on my running as a main focus as this takes up 50% of the race and to improve my aerobic conditioning. Alongside this I will be doing strength work with a focus on leg strength as this is again very required for HYROX, with my upper body less required for the event but also, my upper body is already stronger in balance than my lower body. Finally I will be mixing the two with metabolic conditioning sessions, these will be the most closely resembling HYROX sessions I will do, they will mix between station work and other similar exercises. I know already my focus needs to be on Erg conditioning as this is not something I’ve done before as well as burpee broad jumps and wall balls, as from the early sessions, these are where I am struggling.
There is no time limit on this endeavour but I will be working hard for running consistency around 50/60km a week to start, 3 strength sessions a week and 2/3 metabolic conditioning sessions a week.
Hopefully I will be able to reflect on this with a lot of extra lessons learnt and some fast races ran when I am well on my way to achieving the goals I have. For now, there is no shortcut, I need to focus on doing the work, recovering well with sleep, nutrition and hydration and the most important aspect, consistency.
ZF Health Collective 
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