Q&A: Hyrox Endurance Sessions, Burpee Breathing, Zone 2 with Limited Time & Bodyweight Myths — Dan Plews (#26)

**John Paton** (0:00)
Let's move on to some of these questions and answers. Let's start with this one. So, we'd love to hear more examples of what a Hyrox Endurance Session looks like. What does a Hyrox Endurance Session look like, Dan?

**Dan Plews** (0:12)
Well, we should give Palaio credit, because he's the inventor of the Hyrox Endurance Session, not me, so credit to Palaio on this one.
The Hyrox Endurance Session, it basically varies from, I think the lowest portion would be, this is what you and me did actually, John, together. It can vary from an hour to a maximum of two and a half hours. I have done two and a half hours before. Typically, it would be split into two bouts, which might be two 45-minute bouts of continuous exercises. And those continuous exercises will be generally not involve running, but they will involve ergs and stations and all things that might be close to a station. And it's just a continuous, so you set it up and you might do, you might set off and you might have five exercises in a station. And every time you go through that station, you may increase it. So you might start off with like five cows on the rower, five cows on the rower, 10 meters of walking lunges, 10 meters of sled pull, and then eight burpees to plate, something like that. And then next, basically you continue to do that continuously for 45 minutes. And every time you might increase the cows on the rower by five, increase the duration of the pull by 10 meters and the number of burpees to plate by two.

**John Paton** (1:30)
So you just keep on increasing.

**Dan Plews** (1:31)
But the most important thing is it's a continuous exercise and you're aiming to keep quite a consistent heart rate. But it's not a really heavy, high heart rate either. It's around that kind of top of your L2, lower level 3A, what we like to call it. So right on the threshold of your LT1. So that might be the first round for 45 minutes. Take a break. Then you'll do another 45 minute round with a slightly different variation of exercises.

**John Paton** (2:00)
Yeah. And I think one of the benefits of these kinds of sessions, you really learn how to pace yourself. So I actually posted the heart rate data. But yeah, so Dan and I both did a Hyrox Endurance session a couple of weeks ago. And we both collected our heart rate data. I mean, there's a chart on my blog that shows that. And Dan was able to keep this very consistent heart rate data, whereas I spiked quite a bit, especially on the different station movements. But I think this is one thing that I'm going to get good at just from experience. And you really learn how to slow down when you're doing a session like this. And I think that's one of the benefits here.

**Dan Plews** (2:34)
Yeah. Well, that's the thing, right? Because you have to, there's no way you can survive an hour and a half if you're going all out. So you become very efficient going through the stations as quickly as you can with minimal effort, which is efficiency, right? And that's the real benefit of doing those Hyrox and Joe sessions. I think they're a real good one.

**John Paton** (2:55)
Yeah. Okay. Well, related to that, we have a question from Love, Live, Laugh, Run. They ask, Burpee broad jumps. I can't seem to catch my breath. So what advice do you have for somebody who can't catch their breath on burpee broad jumps?

**Dan Plews** (3:09)
Well, do you have any advice, John? Let's start with you.

**John Paton** (3:12)
Yeah. I think, I again think this is one of the benefits of training with a heart rate monitor. Oh, I noticed this a lot when I was doing ski erg initially. Basically, any pace I did on ski erg, my heart rate would be really high. But one time I just decided, you know what? I'm going to do whatever it takes to ski at 140 beats per minute. And basically, that ended up with me barely tapping it down, and basically learning how to not move my body as much as possible. But that was kind of a way that I started to learn how to control my heart rate somewhat. And I think it's similar on emotion like burpees. I think you probably can find a way to do it where you're controlling your heart rate, but you probably have to slow down in places which you maybe aren't familiar with. So it probably means taking more time at the bottom, and maybe more time at the top, and just finding those periods where you can pause a little bit. But there might be other nuances to that. So I'm curious to hear your take on that as well, Dan.