Hyrox Requires Incredible Aerobic Capacity! Chris Bayens - Coach to Elite 15 Athletes (#25)

**John Paton** (0:00)
Okay, I'm here today with Chris Bayens. Now, Chris is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most innovative and knowledgeable coaches in the Hyrox space. He currently coaches a number of elite 15 athletes, including Josh Van Zeeland and Cole Learn. And today, we're gonna learn more about Chris's training philosophy. Chris, welcome to the show.

**Chris Baynes** (0:22)
Thanks for having me, it's a great pleasure to be here.

**John Paton** (0:24)
Okay, Hyrox is a roughly 60 to 90 minute event for most individuals. So what do you see as some of the key athletic qualities needed to perform well at the event of Hyrox?

**Chris Baynes** (0:35)
It's a good question. And I suppose the thing I'd say most is that, you know, created like an endurance sport. So sort of if people follow me or sort of know my methodologies, I've said for a long time, I don't love the term sort of hybrid racing or hybrid fitness. I think it sort of leads people away from first principles. So really, when I first looked at the sport, I said, look, what, as you said it, what is the time duration? It's 60 to 90 minutes. So whenever you're doing any sort of event sport like that, exercise, you first got to look at first principles. What is the time domain? If it's 60 to 90 minutes, the energy production is aerobic. So first and foremost, you have to treat it as an aerobic event. I mean, upwards of probably 90 to 95% of your energy production has to be aerobic because as we all know, the anaerobic energy system is good for about 60 seconds. It's incredibly fatiguing. So first and foremost, pretty like an endurance sport. And I guess that underpins everything. So it comes down to how good is your aerobic capacity, your base, whatever you want to call that. So yeah, first and foremost, it is a sport that will be, when performed well, we perform well by an athlete with an incredible aerobic capacity, which I believe your last guest articulated pretty well.

**John Paton** (1:52)
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So yeah, so it's in that 60 to 90 minute domain for most athletes. And the endurance side is absolutely critical. I think when many people look at Hyrox, the thing that stands out is the sleds or is the strength components. So tell us about the strength side of Hyrox. How important do you think the strength side is for the sport?

**Chris Baynes** (2:11)
You've got to be, I guess, precise with your language. And are we talking about maximal strength or strength endurance? And it's sort of the thing that I've tried to, I guess, post and create content about that. There's a big difference between maximal strength and strength endurance. So again, if you look at the sled push, even the fastest sled push in a pro open doubles is going to be over a minute. So again, the energy production still has to be largely aerobically driven. And in the context of a race, you know, what is it? 15 minutes into a race, it can't then just be super aerobic because again, you have to look at the fatigue side of it. So even the strength side, I think if people focus more on strength endurance and producing hundreds, if not thousands of reps under some form of fatigue and then adjust their training accordingly. So I've sort of always said to people, you need to be strong enough. If you get to the sled push and you can't move it, you're probably going to have a pretty long day out. As long as you have that minimum effective strength, that you can move it and that the weight is not getting close to that one rep match.
There was a video that I shared a couple of weeks ago that I think demonstrated that point. Well, there was a, I think his name is Colossus Flex, where he did like a 1RM sled push. I don't know if you saw that video where he was just loading the sled up and he ended up doing a sled push of like 535 kilos or something like that, which would then indicate that the percentage of your 1RM of a sled push in a Hyrox is well under 50%.
The maximal strength of man is quite low. So again, it's how well do you continue to produce force under fatigue and under a longer time duration. And really that comes down to how well your slow twitch fibers can produce force. And you're talking about maximal strength, it's obviously a completely anoramic process. One rep max wants to take less than 10 seconds. So it's all the ATP PC system and anything higher than that will be slightly glycolytic. And again, that energy system is largely redundant in a Hyrox race. So of course you have to be strong enough. But if you focus more on your ability to reduce force repetitively under a certain amount of fatigue, you're going to do better. So it's obviously where it shows up first on the sled push and the sled pull.