HYROX training as a dad: kids and a full-time job

HYROX is eight kilometers of running with eight stations broken up between them: ski erg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, row, farmers carry, sandbag lunges, wall balls. I put a date on one in December. I have a toddler and a baby, and most weeks I am awake somewhere in the three o'clock hour.

The mistake is training the stations

You read that list, you picture the sled, and you go looking for a gym that has one. But the race is mostly running. Eight kilometers of it, on legs that keep getting wrecked in between. No amount of sled practice saves a guy who cannot run eight kilometers tired, and if you can run them tired, one focused session on a real sled will teach you more than weeks of invented garage substitutions.

The week I actually run

It is boring on purpose. Two lifts, lower body and carries on Monday, pressing and pulling on Friday, neither one anywhere near failure. Three easy days: an easy run, a ruck with a loaded backpack, and a longer run on Saturday, all of it at full-sentence pace, which means if you cannot finish a sentence out loud you are going too fast. One hard day, Wednesday, twenty five minutes of running mixed with dumbbell work, and I score it so I have something to beat. Sunday I walk and write down two numbers.

What it costs

About five hours. Some of it is a stroller. The only session that costs me anything is Wednesday, and on the weeks the baby wins it shrinks to three easy rounds with no clock, and I do not call that a failure. Shrink the day before you skip it.

I have been coaching since 2012 and I am training less now than I have in years. I am also more consistent than I have ever been. 199 pounds in November, 185 in January, 170 in July. None of that came from a hard week. It came from a week that kept happening while the rest of my life did too.

If you want the same shape

You do not need a race. The same skeleton without the December date is free, and it lives at thewholedad.com/workouts. The first workout, Baseline, lands in your inbox about a minute after you sign up. And if you do have a date on the calendar, the free twelve week plan is HYROX PREP.

It all counts.