Method and sources

What it is

A rules-based schedule generator. You give it a race date, a start date, your experience, how much you run each week now, the days you can train, your longest session and your equipment. The same answers always produce the same plan. It runs entirely in your browser and saves the plan on your device.

The rules

Phases

The weeks to your race are divided into base, build and race-specific phases, followed by a taper. Roughly a third of the training weeks are race-specific, a third are build, and the rest are base. Plans of ten weeks or more end with a taper week and a race week. Shorter plans have a race week only.

Progression and lighter weeks

Weekly training time starts at about 70% of its peak and rises gradually. In plans with six or more training weeks, every fourth week is lighter, at roughly 60% of that week's normal volume, so the work before it can be absorbed. The final hard week before the taper is never a lighter week.

The week

Sessions are added in priority order as you offer more days: a quality running session, a strength session and a long session first, then an easy run, then a station circuit or a second run, then a recovery session. The planner tries every arrangement of those sessions across your chosen days and picks the one that keeps demanding sessions furthest apart, with the long session late in the week. If your days are consecutive, some hard sessions will be back to back, and the plan tells you where.

Sessions

Effort is prescribed on a 1 to 10 scale of perceived exertion rather than as paces or loads, because the planner has no test data for you. Running moves from short intervals in the base phase, to one-kilometre repeats in the build phase, to running at race effort between stations. Race simulations grow through the race-specific phase and scale with experience: partial distances for people new to the sport, up to one full simulation for experienced athletes. The largest simulation is kept at least a week clear of race week.

Equipment

Each station has a substitution used when you do not have the equipment, listed in our guide to training without the kit. Adapted sessions are marked.

Limits built in

• Three to six training days a week. At least one full rest day, always.
• People new to this training are capped at five days and 75-minute sessions.
• Plans cover at most the final 36 weeks before a race.
• With fewer than four weeks, the plan does not try to build fitness. It keeps you sharp and rested, and says so.
• With less than a week, you get race-week guidance only.

Exports

Exports are made in your browser from the plan as it stands, so anything you have moved, eased or annotated is included. Calendar files use the standard iCalendar format. Garmin files use Garmin's FIT workout format and are checked against Garmin's official FIT software; runs become timed or measured steps with repeats, and strength and station sessions become steps you advance with the lap button. COROS does not accept planned workouts from a file, so for COROS we offer the calendar, a text copy and the same FIT files for training platforms that sync to COROS. A share link carries only your answers, never your notes or progress.

What it cannot do

• It does not know your health, injuries, age or training history beyond the three experience levels.
• It does not adjust to how sessions actually go. If you miss a week, it will not rewrite the rest. Rebuild the plan from a new start date instead.
• It does not prescribe paces, heart-rate zones or weights.
• It does not account for other sports, shift work, travel or illness.
• It has not been tested in a controlled study, and we make no claim about results.

This is general educational guidance, not medical advice and not a substitute for a qualified coach. No coach or organisation has endorsed it, including HYROX.

Sources and how we used them

We drew on published research and public guidance. We did not copy any proprietary plan.

1. The Fitness Race: format, stations and weights, HYROX (official). Defines what the plan prepares you for: eight 1 km runs alternating with eight stations in a fixed order. Station distances in simulations are fractions of these published distances.
2. Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis (Bosquet et al., 2007), Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. The taper. The analysis found the best results from roughly two weeks of substantially reduced volume with intensity and frequency maintained. Plans of ten weeks or more get a taper week plus race week at about 60% and 40% of peak volume, and keep short race-effort work in both.
3. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults (ACSM position stand, 2009), Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Strength sessions: multi-joint lifts first, moderate loads and higher reps for people starting out, heavier loads and lower reps later, with rest between sets.
4. What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes? (Seiler, 2010), International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. Intensity balance. Most running in the plan is easy, with one or two harder sessions a week rather than moderate effort every day.
5. Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises (Wilson et al., 2012), Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Combining strength and endurance work. The plan separates demanding strength and running sessions across the week where your chosen days allow.
6. How to structure your HYROX training, HYROX Hub (independent newsletter). A cross-check on common practice in the community: a mix of running sessions with strength or station sessions each week. We did not copy any session or plan from it.

Session wording, exercise selection and the substitution table are our own. Where a rule is a common coaching convention rather than a research finding, such as the lighter fourth week, we have described it as a rule and not as evidence.

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