HYROX Is More Aerobic Than You Think! Joel Jamieson — Morpheus Founder on HRV, Aerobic Development & Strength-Endurance (#30)

**John Paton** (0:00)
I'm here today with Coach Joel Jamieson. Now, Joel is the creator of the immensely popular 8 Weeks Out coaching training program, where he's helped train thousands of athletes and coaches on the best practices behind conditioning. He's also the creator of Morpheus, a recovery-based training app that has become immensely popular in the sport of hyrox. And we're gonna talk more about this fitness app in this podcast. Joel, welcome to the show.

**Joel Jamieson** (0:26)
Thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here with you.

**John Paton** (0:28)
So, Joel, hyrox is a roughly 60 to 90-minute event. It's a mixture of running as well as various stations. How do you break down the energy system, the bonds of a sport like hyrox?

**Joel Jamieson** (0:39)
Yeah, I mean, I think anytime, I've talked about energy systems for a long time, and I think the core thing you have to understand is anything that's over a few minutes long is going to have a massive aerobic component. And we just know that because your body can't produce aerobic energy for anywhere near, you know, 60, 90 minutes.
The aerobic foundation really is that. It's the foundation. And then I look at all the exercise stations that are in between the runs, and they're mostly strength endurance, what I'd call anaerobic endurance or lactic endurance type work, where you have to be able to sustain those exercises long enough to not get fatigued, and then go back into the running piece. You know, it's really just, you know, you need a pretty good VO2 mask, good aerobic foundation, then you need muscular endurance and movement capacity in the exercise you're doing. And then I think you have to be able to put all those pieces together. You have to be able to have good pacing. You have to have good technique in the exercises. You're not wasting energy. You have to have good just overall awareness of the speed you're going at and making sure that everything is where it needs to be. It's an interesting sport because it is on one hand an endurance-based sport because you have very clear endurance needs, but then you also have the strength endurance, which isn't necessarily an offshoot of the aerobic piece. So it's a good mix.

**John Paton** (1:43)
Yeah, it's definitely a good mix. And I feel like you're an absolute master at figuring out how to put together training for sports like this that have different components. So when you think about Hyrox, you think about the running, you think about the various aerobic work, you think about the strength training needed as well. How do you think about balancing that kind of work within a training week? How would you go about doing that, Joel?

**Joel Jamieson** (2:02)
Yeah, so just for your listeners who might not have seen anything about me before, I spent a lot of time working with combat athletes, 15, 20 years working with the highest level athletes. And the biggest thing about a sport like combat sports or even team sports, there's always like the right mix, right? And I think this idea of a hybrid athlete is nothing new. It's I need to have some level of strength and power, and then I need to be able to maintain that for a certain amount of time. And the amount of time you have to maintain it for dictates everything. Because if I don't have to produce the force and power for more than 10 seconds, that's a very clear demand. To be able to produce some level of force and power for an hour, that's a completely different demand. So the way I always look at it is just what is the right formula? Because the biggest thing people do have to understand is there always is an inherent trade off in how much power you can produce and how long you can sustain that for, right? If I need to run marathon distances, then obviously, I'm not going to be able to produce enough force and power to go compete in a powerlifting event because I don't, I can't develop that anaerobic side high enough because it will cost me the endurance side and vice versa. Every sport just comes down to understanding what is the right mixture. So if you spend huge amounts of time developing VO2 max, you would increase your running capacity, but you would do that at the expense of the anaerobic piece that you need to do those exercises. And vice versa, if you spent all your time doing the strength work and the strength endurance work, and you weren't focused on the running and aerobic work, you'd get better at the stations, but you wouldn't be able to sustain that over the entire event. So that's where I think most people need to understand is that each person, this is my biggest philosophy point here, is each person is a bit different. Like you're all individual people with genetic predispositions and different capacities to aerobic versus anaerobic side. And so you need to kind of figure out where you fall within the spectrum of what's necessary. And then your training week should be built around reducing the limitations, getting rid of the constraints. So if my biggest problem is the running side, then I'm going to focus more of my training week around improving that capacity. If I'm really good at the running, but I'm lagging in this particular exercises or all the exercises, which one exercise, then my week's going to be targeting around building those. So I always take a constraints-based approach, and that's going to be different for everybody.