Rep The SetA self-coached 8-week HYROX plan
Three to four sessions a week, most of them easier than you want, building to a full simulation before the taper. A plan you run yourself, with the structure to run it properly and honest targets to measure it against.
This is a plan for someone who wants to coach themselves. That is a real choice with a real trade: an app that adapts your training week to week is genuinely useful, and if that is what you want, we compared the apps that do it honestly elsewhere on this blog. What a static plan gives you instead is understanding. You know why each session exists, so you can adjust it yourself when life interferes, and nothing renews monthly.
The principle underneath the whole plan is the one experienced HYROX athletes repeat most: the easiest trap is making every session hard. Race day is one maximal effort. Training for it is mostly not. The plan runs three required sessions a week plus one optional, and two of the four are deliberately easier than you will want them to be. If every week feels heroic, you are borrowing from the weeks that matter.
The week has a fixed shape. Session one is running quality: intervals early in the plan, compromised running later, meaning runs that start when your legs are already loaded. Session two is strength and station skill: sleds, carries, lunges, wall balls, done well rather than fast. Session three is the circuit, the session this sport is actually made of: stations grouped into blocks, repeated in rounds, with the rest programmed on purpose. The optional fourth is long and easy, a run or an erg, at a pace you could hold a conversation at.
| Week | Focus | The key session |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseline | An honest circuit at even effort, recorded, not raced |
| 2 | Volume | Add a round to the circuit; runs stay conversational |
| 3 | Volume | Longest week; the optional fourth session earns its place |
| 4 | Intensity | Half simulation: four runs, four stations, race order |
| 5 | Intensity | Compromised running: every interval starts off a station |
| 6 | Race practice | Station weak points, found in week 4, get their own session |
| 7 | Simulation | The full race shape, timed, two or more days of rest after |
| 8 | Taper | Half volume, race pace touches only, arrive hungry |
Weeks one to three build volume, not pain. The baseline circuit in week one matters more than it looks: record it, because every later week is measured against it. Weeks four to six raise intensity while volume holds, and the half simulation in week four is diagnostic, not a test. Whatever station cost you the most time relative to its target is what session two practises for the rest of the plan.
Week seven is the full simulation: eight runs alternating with the eight stations, in race order, timed. Run it once, properly rested, and treat the result as information. One honest number to carry into race day beats three heroic sessions that leave you flat. Week eight halves everything and touches race pace only in short doses. The fitness is already built; the taper spends it well.
Two honest notes about what a gym simulation can and cannot tell you. It prices your work: runs and stations, the parts you train. It cannot contain a roxzone, the transition floor that adds real minutes on race day, so compare work to work and expect the race total to sit above the sim total. That gap is the race, not a training failure.
For targets, the band calculator prices any of these sessions, or the full race, at Beginner, Advanced and Elite pace, and every station movement has its own pacing page. A band is a pace, not a verdict; it tells you what the session cost, which is exactly what a self-coached athlete needs to know.
Running the plan in Rep The Set is straightforward because the plan is shaped like the app: build the circuit as stations, blocks and rounds, run it on the clock with the phone on the floor, and use the race simulation preset for weeks four and seven. The free tier runs all of it. If you would rather be told what to do each week by something that adapts, that is a subscription coaching app, and there is no shame in it; this plan is for the athlete who wants to own the reasoning.
Related reading: why your race was slower than your sim, on reading the race against the training that predicted it.