Losing fat while training for HYROX

How big a deficit?

While you are training hard for HYROX, keep the deficit modest, around 10 to 20% below maintenance. For most people that means aiming for roughly 0.25 to 0.5 kg a week rather than the 0.5 to 1 kg you might target in a pure fat loss phase.

It is slower, but it protects what you are trying to build: your engine, your strength and your ability to recover from all that compromised running. Our guide to the calorie deficit shows how to work out your numbers, and remember that a big training block raises your maintenance, sometimes considerably.

Track your weekly average weight alongside a couple of benchmark sessions, such as a 1 km run time and a set of wall balls. If weight is dropping slowly and the benchmarks hold or improve, the deficit is about right.

Timing in your training block

Where the fat loss happens in your build matters. A common structure for a 12 to 16-week build looks like this:

• Early weeks (base phase): a modest deficit fits best here, while volume is building and intensity is moderate.
• Middle weeks: keep a small deficit only if training is going well, and add food on your biggest training days.
• Final four to six weeks: move to maintenance. This is when race-specific sessions, simulations and high-intensity work peak, and you need full recovery.
• Taper and race week: eat at maintenance or slightly above, with plenty of carbohydrate in the final days. Never try to cut weight in race week.

Our 12-week HYROX plan shows how a typical build is structured, so you can see where a fat loss phase slots in.

Fuelling key sessions

Not every day needs the same food. Put most of your carbohydrate around the hardest sessions, such as long runs, intervals, simulations and big strength days, and take more of the deficit on rest days and easier days.

• Before hard sessions: a carbohydrate-based meal 2 to 3 hours before, or a small snack such as a banana 30 to 60 minutes before.
• After hard sessions: a meal with protein and carbohydrate within a couple of hours.
• On rest days: slightly fewer carbs, with protein, vegetables and fibre kept high.

Hydration matters too. Long sessions in a warm gym can leave you short of fluid, which makes everything feel harder than it should.

Our guide to nutrition for HYROX training goes deeper, and the race itself is covered in HYROX race day nutrition.

Protein and strength

Keep protein at 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg of body weight a day throughout. HYROX asks a lot of your muscles: pushing and pulling sleds, carrying, lunging and throwing wall balls. Losing muscle in a deficit makes the stations harder, not easier. Spread protein across four meals if you can, including one after training, and use a shake on busy days when you go straight from work to a session.

Keep strength training in your week as well. Two sessions focused on legs, posterior chain, pushing and pulling will help you hold muscle and perform on the stations. A bit of body mass helps on the sleds, so there is no point chasing the lowest possible body weight. Aim to be lean, strong and well fuelled.

Signs you are cutting too hard

• Interval and simulation times getting worse over two to three weeks.
• Heavy legs that do not recover between sessions.
• Poor sleep, low mood or constant hunger.
• More niggles and minor injuries than usual.
• For women, changes to your menstrual cycle.

If you notice two or three of these together, raise calories to maintenance for at least a week or two. Training usually bounces back quickly, and you can return to a smaller deficit once it does, or leave fat loss until after the race.

Training for HYROX in Irlam

Lycan Strength is an official HYROX affiliated gym with a full-length turf sled track, where the Full Body, Upper and Lower classes build strength for the stations and Engine and Lycan Shred cover the conditioning. Nutrition and accountability coaching is available alongside, which helps when you are balancing a race goal and a fat loss goal at the same time. See HYROX training at Lycan Strength for more.

Training alongside other people preparing for the same race makes the long weeks of a build easier, and Doubles and Relay partners are a built-in source of accountability for the food side as well as the training.