If you’ve just wrapped up a big HYROX race—or your final event of the season, most likley the recent world champs in Chicago—you might be feeling a bit… lost. The high of competition fades, motivation takes a dip, and that structured balance of work, training, and recovery you built over the past months suddenly disappears.
But here's the deal: the off-season isn’t a time to go “all in” or “all out.” For HYROX athletes—where both strength and endurance matter—it’s about intelligent downtime: recovering mentally and physically while maintaining enough of your engine to springboard into your next build.
In this blog, I’ll break down what happens when you stop training, what you should keep in, and how to use the off-season to set yourself up for your best HYROX season yet.
Detraining: What Happens When We Stop?
Take too much time off—and we’re not just talking endurance loss. As hybrid athletes, detraining hits both sides of the equation:
- Endurance capacity drops (↓ VO₂max, ↓ blood volume, ↑ HR at submax work)
- Strength and neuromuscular adaptations fade (↓ muscle cross-sectional area, ↓ neural drive)
- Metabolic flexibility suffers (↓ fat oxidation, ↑ reliance on carbs)
- Compromised running gets harder (↓ lactate threshold, ↓ muscle glycogen)
- Station proficiency declines (especially for movements like sled push/pull, wall balls, burpee broad jumps)
Mujika and Padilla’s classic work (2000a, 2000b) showed significant aerobic and muscular performance declines after just a few weeks off, especially in endurance-trained individuals. For hybrid athletes like us, the impact is twofold: you risk backsliding on both your strength and conditioning adaptations.
But here’s the good news: it doesn’t take much to maintain your gains.
Your HYROX Off-Season Goals
The goal isn’t to keep hammering. The goal is to stay ready enough to build back fast. That means:
🎯Mentally and physically refreshing
🎯Letting niggles settle
🎯 Keeping neuromuscular patterns sharp
🎯Maintaining just enough endurance and strength stimulus
🎯 Reconnecting with family, friends, and the rest of your life
Think of this like a taper—not for a race, but for your body and brain. You pull back the load, reduce the stress, but retain the core adaptations (Mujika & Padilla, 2000b).
Reduce your injury risk on return to training
Furthermore, keeping some training in your off-season reduces your injury risk when you return to full training. Research consistently shows that the greatest injury risk comes after a period of full rest followed by a sharp ramp-up in load—something HYROX athletes need to be particularly careful with, given the high-impact nature of compromised running, sled work, and wall balls.
Personally, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned the hard way that taking 3–4 weeks completely off after racing is a recipe for disaster. And it’s not just anecdotal—research in endurance athletes shows that injury risk increases when weekly training volume drops below 8 or spikes above 15 hours (Zwingenberger et al., 2014). For hybrid athletes juggling both strength and endurance work, maintaining a low but consistent training load in the off-season is the safest and most effective way to prep your body for the next build. See the Figure below.
So, What Should HYROX Off-Season Training Look Like?
Here’s what we recommend for most athletes:
1. Lower Frequency, Lower Volume – But Keep Moving
- Cut back the number of sessions, especially midweek.
- Prioritise low-intensity efforts when possible (e.g., easy runs, aerobic row/SkiErg).
- No need for 15–20k of compromised running—but don’t ghost your aerobic base.
2. Keep It Easy—Mostly
The majority of your sessions should stay below VT1 (first threshold). This maintains mitochondrial density and metabolic health without excessive stress. Low-intensity work helps stimulate Type I muscle fibres, which remain central to prolonged efforts across the race (Seiler, 2010).
3. Include a Little High-Intensity Work
One session a week of structured intervals is enough. Why?
Rønnestad et al. (2014) showed that cyclists who maintained one HIIT session per week during an eight-week off-season retained more VO₂max and muscular endurance than those who didn’t—and returned to structured training in better shape.
Apply this in a HYROX context: one short, targeted session (e.g., 2(8 x 40 sec 120% of thresholds, with 20 sec recovery) (2 min recovery between sets)) on a SkiErg, bike, or rower is all you need to maintain that high-end gear. These types of short intervals, are a great hybrid session to tap into all areas of physiology with neuromuscular, anaerobic and aerobic components. Don't leave them out.
4. Don't forget some Strength
HYROX isn’t just about cardio. You know that.
The off-season is the golden window for maximal strength work:
- Prioritise compound lifts (trap bar deadlift, Bulgarian split squat, hip thrust)
- Mobility - include this in all sessions, and priortize good range in all movements over weight.
- Focus on form and range of moment, not fatigue
This is all about maintainence, with some good transfer over to running limiting the risk of injury when you return to full training (Blagrove et al., 2018).
5. Work on Movement Efficiency
- Practice sled technique (both push and pull)
- Refine wall ball rhythm and pacing
- Use drills to reinforce running mechanics under load
This is your chance to slow things down, improve technique, and get better, not just fitter.
Example: HYROX Off-Season vs In-Season Week
Below is an example of an off-season week, compared to an in-season week.
Summary: Make the Off-Season Work For You
The off-season isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing just enough of the right things.
Key takeaways:
- Reduce overall volume and frequency, especially during the week
- Keep almost all endurance sessions below VT1
- Include one HIIT session per week to maintain your high-end
- Focus on strength and movement quality (ROM)
- Use this time to refresh, reconnect, and reset
Off-season done right = fewer injuries, faster fitness rebuild, and better HYROX racing in the year ahead.
References
Blagrove, R. C., Howatson, G., & Hayes, P. R. (2018). Should competitive runners include resistance training in their programme? Sports Medicine, 48(3), 539–552. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-017-0819-y
Mujika, I., & Padilla, S. (2000a). Detraining: Loss of training-induced physiological and performance adaptations. Part I: Short term insufficient training stimulus. Sports Medicine, 30(2), 79–87. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200030020-00002
Mujika, I., & Padilla, S. (2000b). Detraining: Loss of training-induced physiological and performance adaptations. Part II: Long term insufficient training stimulus. Sports Medicine, 30(3), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200030030-00001
Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, J., & Ellefsen, S. (2014). Block periodization of high-intensity aerobic intervals provides superior training effects in trained cyclists. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 24(1), 34–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.12030
Seiler, S. (2010). What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes? International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 5(3), 276–291.
wingenberger, S., Walther, A., Möhler, K., Groll, A., & Bouillon, B. (2014). Running intensity and the risk of injuries in marathon runners: A prospective cohort study. International Orthopaedics, 38(10), 2229–2234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-014-2398-1
