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I completed a Hyrox simulation

· Amanda Ng
personal

Just a few hours ago from writing this blog post, I completed a Hyrox simulation. It took me a whopping 2 h and 13 min, but I’m proud to have completed it. It’s a milestone for about a year of consistently working out. Anyhow, this post will be a lot more casual, documenting my experience with this n = 1 Hyrox attempt.

Table of contents

What is Hyrox?

Hyrox is an indoor race involving eight functional workout stations — each preceded by a 1 km run. Created by Christian Toetzke and Moritz Furste, and hosted in Germany in 2017, Hyrox has exploded in popularity including in my home country — Singapore.

Here’s the sequence of workout stations. Before each station, participants run 1 km so that makes for 8 km total. Five of the stations (sled push, sled pull, farmers carry, sandbag lunges, and wall balls) are weighted with weights varying depending on the Hyrox category.

1000 m SkiErg
↓
50 m Sled Push
↓
50 m Sled Pull
↓
80m Burpee Broad Jump
↓
1000 m Rowing
↓
200 m Farmers Carry
↓
100 m Sandbag Lunges
↓
100 Wall Balls

Hydration was my most important takeaway

Prior to this Hyrox simulation, I had been familiarising myself with the movement standards for the stations the past year. All except the sled pull — pulling 78 kg across carpeted flooring (for the Women’s Open category). To put into perspective, 78 kg is almost to 150% of my body weight so the idea of confronting a new movement I had never done before was a little frightening. I ended up watching a number of videos on the sled pull techniques, which turned out to be quite useful esepcially this one by Woodsyworkout.

For all the movement standards and techniques I had learnt, hydration was the most important.

While casually scrolling through Instagram reels, I’ve gotten a handful of videos covering techniques but pretty much none on hydration. As such, I thought sharing about my hydration strategy aided by chatting with Gemini and reading articles like this one by RB100.fitness.

My hydration strategy

Here’s my hydration strategy, which worked well for me. I am, however, not a trained nutritionist or coach, so take my experience as an example of what has worked for one person and adopt it to your needs and race conditions.

1. Weigh yourself before and after the race.
By comparing your weight before and after the race, you can get a good gauge of water loss through sweat. This lost water is what you should replenish after the race.

2. Sip on an electrolyte mixture between runs/stations.
The electrolyte mixture could be store-bought or homemade. As recommended by several sources like the article above by RB100.fitness, the mixture should contain some sodium, potassium and carbohydrates. In my case, I dissolves some salt and honey in water with a squeeze of lime juice as my electrolyte mixture. I took 2-3 sips of the mixture between runs/stations and ended up consuming close to 1.5 litres.

3. After the race, drink sufficient electrolytes to replenish the water loss.
Remember the first step? Take note of that difference in your weight before and after the race. The weight loss is largely water loss, and this water loss must be replenished ideally over the next 2-4 hours. For me, I consumed an additional 2.0 litres of my homemade electrolyte mixture.

For steps 2 and 3, do not chug; drink the electrolyte mixture or water in sips. The goal is to re-hydrate your body consistently.

My homemade electrolyte recipe

  • 1.5 litres water
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1/2 tbsp lime juice