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Nutrition plays a key role in achieving your best performance in Hyrox on race day. This article will break down how you can fuel your body effectively in the runup to, on the morning of, and throughout race day.
The week leading up to your race is very important. Two things you want to avoid are last-minute changes and chasing your nutrition right before the event. This can lead to unexpected nutrition stress and impact your performance. To address this follow these tips:
Experimenting with newer foods and supplements right before your event may lead to digestive issues. Always try to stick to meals you’ve already tried and tested. The importance of replication cannot be stressed enough. Practice your snacks, breakfast, meals and nutrition products you plan to use in and around race day.
Ensure that your diet is aligned with the right carb-loading strategies, which we will go over shortly.
Plan your meals out beforehand, ensuring that your portions and ingredients are consistent. This should help you have more control over what you consume.
Once you know around the time that your race will start, plan out your race day meals. The best strategy here is to work back from your start time as this allows you the best chance feeling fuelled.
Take into consideration travel; if your event requires travel, either bring your own meals or research food options on location before you go.
As you get closer to your race, start to taper down your training intensity and volume to allow your body to recover properly and begin to store energy. This is essential regardless of your level of fitness.
Whilst carb loading for Hyrox may not be as essential as when doing longer events such as a Marathon or Iron Man, you still want to prevent glycogen depletion on race day. Glycogen (the stored form of carbohydrates) are a key determinant of your exercise performance with HYROX being a form of exercise that will deplete glycogen relatively quickly.
To avoid reduced power output and fatigue, make a form of carb loading something to consider.
Don’t overload on carbohydrates all week. A gradual increase from 48 hours before the event would be sufficient to keep topping up your glycogen stores without making you feel bloated.
Instead of taking a 1 or 2 big pre race meal, aim for regular, consistent and smaller intakes to add to your glycogen stores whilst reducing the risk of gastric discomfort. The idea of consuming as much pasta as you can on the night before is not advised.
Think about adding extra snacks, larger servings of carbs at main meals or drinking liquid carbs between meals. Small changes rather than sweeping changes to your current diet.
For Hyrox race day, your priorities are maximisation of energy, minimisation of fatigue, and maintaining your mental clarity. Here are some of our main tips to help you perform.
Consume 1g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight, focusing on low protein, fat and fibre foods.
Consume 20-40g of liquid carbohydrates to deliver quick energy without digestive stress. You can use gels or the MARCHON Workout Fuel (you can use the caffeine free version if your start time is in the evening)
It’s unlikely you will need anything during a Hyrox race, but if you do, take a gel at station 4 or 5 to get the most benefit.
Caffeine is proven to have benefits on physical performance, including:
Take caffeine around 30 minutes before your race to allow time for absorption.
Aim for around 2.5-3mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, adjusting it based on your personal tolerance.
Any source of caffeine works, whether it is coffee, preworkout like workout fuel or just a caffeine supplement will work fine.
Supplements can help you fill nutritional gaps, but they are most effective when combined with a balanced diet. Here’s a quick guide to our supplements for Hyrox.
4g of beta alanine for 45 days can help buffer your muscle acidity, helping to delay fatigue. Be sure to check out our article on what is beta alanine?
5g of creatine monohydrate per day can help boost your strength and endurance over time. Be sure to also take a look at our article how much creatine do you need per day whilst you’re here.
Take 2 capsules of our Peak Endurance supplement per day for 4 weeks to improve your aerobic performance.
Take one scoop of our Performance Hydration Powder daily to maintain hydration and electrolyte balance.
Help to maintain your overall health, cellular repair and immune function with fish oil and vitamin D spray.
1-2 scoops of Workout Fuel before training or racing can help provide fast and consistent energy.
Not necessarily required for race day, but can be useful if you need a boost around stations 4-5.
As natural as it is to want to go straight back into training after a hyrox race, it is essential that you follow a recovery protocol to help maintain your long-term health and performance. Intense exercise can weaken your immune system temporarily, which can leave you vulnerable to illness.
Omega 3 will help your cellular regeneration, muscle recovery and immune function.
Vitamin C will aid collagen production and tissue repair, which is essential for faster recovery.
Load up on colourful fruits and vegetables like berries spinach and kale to combat oxidative stress and inflammation.
These are needed for optimising gut health, which plays a role in immunity. Fermented foods, yoghurts and kefir can help promote a healthy gut.
Your Hyrox race nutrition requires you to understand your body’s needs, as well as sticking to your regular tried and tested strategies, and some degree of planning. Whilst you’re here, be sure to check out our article on how to train for Hyrox. Also be sure to take a look at our Hybrid Training Supplements for the best value stack to aid your Hyrox performance.
