Chiba World Recap, Beating the Heat & What Predicts HYROX Success | ENDUROX Podcast Ep. 6
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Adam Storey (00:14)
Dan Plews, glad you got the memo, mate, about the black T-shirts. It's ironic that we just seem to dress alike all the time.
Dan Plews (00:22)
We look exactly the same, George. I also had to pull my microphone down just in time. What's going on, Adam?
Adam Storey (00:30)
Not much, mate, just the tail end of winter. What about yourself? I know you've been logging some big long rides again.
Dan Plews (00:37)
Yeah, mate, the Achilles is on the mend. I've been a bit sick though, to be honest, last week. I got the old man flu.
Adam Storey (00:43)
Been about six, right?
Dan Plews (00:44)
Yeah, I got the old man flu. It was going around the family, the kids were sick, Kate was sick, and I was thinking, nothing can beat me, I'm invincible. Then, lo and behold, a few moments later I was hit.
So I rode a big ride on Wednesday and then came back in feeling distinctly average. From there I had to go a little easier on intensity over the weekend. My HRV and resting heart rate were a little up, but I think I'm on the road to recovery now.
Adam Storey (01:29)
I was literally about to ask you, mate, for the sake of our listeners, what does a sick week of training look like for the Plews?
Dan Plews (01:51)
For the Plews household, it's, well, I tend to do easy aerobic days Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Wednesday I always ride along, I go on my gravel bike because I go out with my mates as well, that's kind of my social day, which I really look forward to. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday I'll do something pretty hard, so I'll stack Tuesday and Thursday with threshold and weights on the same day.
At the moment I'm not doing threshold on a Thursday because I'm coming back from my running, so I'm just running a little easier, trying to get my running volume back up. We were around forty-two K last week, though, which is progress.
Then on Saturday I typically keep Tuesday and Thursday quite controlled in terms of intensity, and Saturday I give it more of a nudge, something a bit longer, a combination of running, erging and skiing, ten to fifteen minute blocks with the heart rate elevated around threshold for that period. I'll take my lactates and they'll be high, into the fours, sometimes higher, but my thresholds I keep around low threes, in line with what they call the golden zone in the Norwegian method.
Adam Storey (03:30)
Awesome. But yeah, when you are struck down with the man flu, what do the modifications look like for you?
Dan Plews (03:40)
So that Saturday session, I did the exact same session, but rather than running at three-thirty pace and erging at one-fifty, I ran at four-fifteen pace and erged at two-minute pace. I kept it right at the top of my level two, bottom end of my level three, just kept it easier, kept it light. I didn't push into the high intensity, and even with the wall balls I didn't push it.
So, say I'm doing that session where I do run, ski, row, fifty wall balls, run, ski, row, forty wall balls, I'll generally do those wall balls unbroken. But if I'm feeling off, I won't let my heart rate rise, I'll drop it after ten, take a rest, let the heart rate come down. I just try to keep the heart rate under control a bit more, because that's one thing with wall balls, you can't control the heart rate, and it's easy to get it very high.
An interesting thing I did today, and I think I'll keep doing, is my longer run at the moment. I'm building it back up, I'm doing an hour-ten this morning, which is nothing like how long I used to run, my longest run now is about ninety minutes. But I did the hour-ten this morning and then did wall balls straight after it.
Adam Storey (05:09)
Mm.
Dan Plews (05:09)
Quite good. I think I'll keep doing that, because you get that achy feeling in your legs at the back end of a run, and I think half of it was those first ten wall balls, when you pick up that ball it's just awful, so uncoordinated, your legs ache, and it tells you to sort of get that mobility back. I actually think it was quite good, so it's something I'm going to keep doing. I used to just do air squats after runs, but I think the wall balls after running are better.
It made me realise that's one of the problems with HYROX. When you're in a HYROX race, I reckon you go more to your arms when you're doing the wall balls, versus when you're fresh you probably use your legs more, because HYROX is so leg dominant. By the time you get to the wall balls your legs are tired, you haven't got that same pop, so you have to start using your arms more. I think it kind of teaches you to try and get that leg mobility back and use your legs a little more under fatigue, because for me it's always my arms that are killing me in a HYROX rather than my legs on the wall balls.
Adam Storey (06:34)
Yeah, those are cool points, man, and it speaks to that muscle memory component as well. Coming off the run you're immediately having to change into a different motor pattern, and if you haven't ingrained that skill it's hard to make that switch. I think with the skill component of sport, in traditional sports like rugby, tennis, whatever, you as coaches really focus on skill development.
But in HYROX I think sometimes we forget about the skill development, we just think of it as lifting weights, pushing sleds, doing runs, doing ergs, but there are still skill components in there as well. I've actually been working with two athletes, building a little training camp for them, they're doing it over in Canada, just the two of them, looking to send it as a women's doubles pair. Across the course of that camp we're intentionally putting in some skill blocks. They'll do their traditional sessions, but then in the afternoons, still under a bit of fatigue, they'll work on skills related to in-competition transition, and on sharpening their actual execution of things like the farmers carry.
Dan Plews (07:52)
So what would a skill session look like? What would they be doing?
Adam Storey (07:58)
They'll finish the training camp with a sim, a good way for them to see where they're at as a pair. Leading into that, before the sim, they'll do a bit of a dress rehearsal of their transitions, how quickly they can make transitions with things like the sandbag lunges and all that. If you look at other sports, you do that intentionally, so it's a really cool opportunity for these two to give that a go.
Dan Plews (08:25)
On that very thing, even picking up the sandbag is a skill in itself. I've been incorporating that into some of my strength sessions in blocks. For example, you might go into bench press and then pick up the sandbag, pull it up and throw it over your head rather than putting it on your shoulders, then pick it up again. With the thirty kilo it's quite posterior chain dominant, you can feel it, it's not nothing.
You do eight of those, a few rounds by the end, and it's the skill of flipping the bag around and doing it fluidly. I remember when I did my first HYROX Pro I was so tired by the time we got to the sandbag lunges I could barely put it on my shoulders. The girl handing out the sandbags saw me do it and just went, ooh.
Adam Storey (09:32)
Yeah, wow. There's a great episode of Bluey, if any listeners watch it, where one of the characters is trying to put a school bag on her back, and she figures out that if she puts the bag on the ground, lies on her back and gets it up that way, it's probably the most efficient method.
Dan Plews (09:51)
I could do that with a sandbag.
Adam Storey (09:53)
You basically did that at your first competition, didn't you.
Dan Plews (09:57)
Well, the first competition was only twenty kilos, so I got away with it.
Adam Storey (10:02)
Talking about competitions, just recently, Chiba, Japan. Obviously there are competitions all round the world, but Chiba is the one we want to chat about today.
Dan Plews (10:11)
There's been some really good racing, the season's well under way now, isn't it. The weekend before we had Chengdu in China as well, which Fabian Eisenlauer [?] won in the men's. I can't remember who won in the ladies. But we're well into the competition season, there was some good racing over the weekend. We saw a new female doubles pairing, Calypso [?] and Joanna Vietrich [?], who went 54:44. I think that was their first outing, which is only a minute off the world record time set by Lauren Weeks [?]. Pretty impressive, wouldn't you say?
Adam Storey (11:01)
Very, very impressive. They've obviously done a lot of work together, but for a new pairing in a competition setting it's always interesting to see how they'll go, and what an absolute send from those two. Very, very tough conditions as well, around twenty-seven degrees from reports.
Dan Plews (11:18)
Yeah, it's funny, because I thought the conditions in Chengdu seemed really slow, did you see that? Fabian Eisenlauer only just went under the hour, six and a half minute wall balls, and he still won, so that shows how tough the conditions were there. This one also seemed like quite tough conditions, but a good friend of the show, Heath Davy [?], shout out to Heath, messaged me this morning saying he felt the conditions were quite fast for the mixed, which was the day after. I don't know, maybe conditions changed, I'm not sure.
If you look at the men's race, that's always a good litmus test. Cole Learn [?] went, let me get the numbers, fifty-four thirty-seven, so that's a quick time regardless, I think one of his quickest times.
Adam Storey (12:31)
Mm.
Dan Plews (12:33)
Jake Williamson [?] though, I'd expect him to go faster than that to be fair, over the hour, but I think he's coming back from a foot surgery, he broke his foot.
Adam Storey (12:42)
He is, yeah. It looked to be a good, kind of teammate run almost between him and Josh. Unfortunate for Josh to put in the nine-point-seven Ks of running with that additional lap, just wanted to get a little bit more conditioning in there.
Dan Plews (12:55)
Good on Josh, well done Josh. Overall Josh did well, when you consider he ran the extra lap before the wall balls unfortunately, a bit of race brain. It's always hard when you're a competitive athlete and you have someone like Cole Learn who was still nearly five minutes in front most likely. I think that's always hard, but I think also, first race back, you've got to take it. If Cole wasn't there, Josh would have won the event in a fifty-eight and it would have been a totally different perspective, but obviously that's not the case. Shout out to Cole, his progression has been somewhat outstanding really, I think he's arguably one of the real threats for the World Championships this year.
Adam Storey (14:09)
Yeah, absolutely. A couple of points, a bit of a rewind, not specifically on Josh, but I think the race brain thing is a very important learning for everyone. Regardless of the level of competitor, those things can still creep in, so it's always about being really cued into competition. Even some of the seemingly basic things, like running the laps under serious fatigue, especially with additional environmental stress like the heat coming into play, that can really lead to a lot of confusion. That's just a real key remote learning.
Dan Plews (14:53)
Also, I think the course was apparently exceptionally busy as well, and when it's really busy you almost lose where you are, there are just so many people around, you forget where you are on the course. Also, think about it, like when we race together in Chicago, a critical point is that I'm running a little easier than you and you almost depend on me to count the laps, because you're going so hard on the runs that I'm telling you when to go in, so you don't even have to think about it and can go as hard as you possibly can.
Adam Storey (15:33)
I'll put my hand up, remember I stuffed that up, mate? I was about to go for another lap.
Dan Plews (15:35)
No, I told you to go in, you'd gone for another lap and I told you to go in.
Adam Storey (15:39)
And you hauled me back. So again I was just in that full, red-line kind of mindset. Just a reminder for everyone. But going back to Cole, absolute weapon of an individual in terms of that performance. Like I guess from our last episode with Dexter, we were having a chat around anthropometrics, ideal body types and things like that. I've always been quite fascinated, not in a creepy way, but in Cole's physique, he's got that classic, very broad structure in terms of long limb lengths, a good level of muscularity while still being very lean. Lever lengths, he's got a lot of advantages for things like ski erg, wall ball. It's interesting to see him as an athlete as a whole. Obviously the rest of his physiology speaks to a very high level, but combined with what some would deem to be good or ideal lever lengths for the sport, it's a dangerous combination.
Dan Plews (16:47)
I don't really know what his height and weight would be, but he's got to be close to one-ninety centimetres tall. I think he's slightly taller than Josh, Josh is one-eighty-eight, and he must be eighty-six, eighty-seven kilos. But the thing about body weight is it obviously has to be expressed relative to your height. One of the things in HYROX, and we talk about this a bit in our sub-50 paper, is that one of the other advantages of being taller is it adds more functional weight, because it helps you with the sleds and the push. There's no point putting on excess body fat to be heavier than the sleds and the push, that's not going to help you. But if you're naturally taller, it's like Heidi Wismer [?], he's also very good at the sled pull, exceptionally tall, naturally heavier. There's something about height giving you that added advantage to some degree, because by default you're functionally heavier.
I think this was actually the first time, from my understanding, that in both the women's pro doubles with Calypso and Joanna, and in the pro men, the third-place finishers got zero points, because they finished more than ten percent behind. If you're second and ten percent out I believe you still get points, but if you're third and ten percent out you get zero. That fell onto Josh because he was third, having run the extra lap.
Adam Storey (18:39)
Get zero points, okay.
Dan Plews (18:41)
Tough game, but hey, everything happens for a reason and everyone learns from these things. I actually went and looked at Cole Learn's progression just before we had this chat. Chicago World Championships 2023, one two. Las Vegas 2025, fifty-eight, another one two. Houston Pro Men, fifty-seven, a decent one. Then HYROX World Championships in Chicago, fifty-nine. Then Boston, three months later, fifty-five thirty. So in three and a half months, almost a seven-point-two percent improvement, he was obviously crushing the training at that point.
Since then he's been on a bit of a tear, consistent, fifty-six in Atlanta, fifty-four in Chicago, fifty-five in Melbourne, fifty-five in Phoenix, and then when he won the Americas Championships, fifty-three thirty-seven. So he's now consistently around that fifty-four mark. Definitely want to keep an eye on him for the 2026 season.
Adam Storey (20:06)
Yeah, and obviously everyone's got a point to prove, but I think in particular Cole had that very unfortunate World Champs experience, so he'd have had a bit of fire in the belly.
Dan Plews (20:16)
Yeah, for sure. Fire in the belly, so to speak.
Adam Storey (20:22)
He was always going to be a tidal wave, a hard one to beat on that day, given he had a very big point to prove to the world.
Dan Plews (20:31)
And very consistent training, and you saw it in the relay, he did the relay a few days after, first off on the ski and the running. That's not easy to do, shows a decent bit of conditioning. Onwards and upwards, Bangkok this weekend.
Adam Storey (20:49)
Bangkok indeed, and that'll be another interesting one. Historically Bangkok is hotter and more humid than Chiba, so obviously there are different air conditioning capacities in these venues, fingers crossed we're in for a goodie. For the doctor, if you were to race in one of these hot conditions, what would your pre-cooling strategy be? Give me a couple of options, option A is bougie, you've got access to everything you want, ice vests, that kind of stuff, and option B, you don't have access to the ice vests, all the bougie stuff, what's the next best option?
Dan Plews (21:20)
One is you want to be doing some heat acclimation beforehand. I don't think it necessarily has to be heat training with a core sensor, that could be good, but I think it's a bit of a dangerous line, you can compromise your training and easily go too far. I prefer some passive heat stress, doing saunas after training, including that in your regime at least five times a week is a good starting point.
The other thing is pre-cooling. You can do that one of two ways. If you can get access to an ice bath, do that as a pre-cool, really good, even thirty minutes before, you'll stay pretty cool if you stay in long enough. Then it's about modifying your warm-up, lower intensity, a little shorter, more mobility work, trying to keep as cool as possible.
You could also do an ice slushy, ideally, ingestion, we've done research on that, which is better than just drinking cold water because of the phase change, also known as the enthalpy of fusion for the more scientific among us. That's basically when the ice melts inside your stomach it draws heat, so it's more effective than just drinking pure cold water. Then ice vests, and maybe a cooling hat in the warm-up area, and take it off just before, that would be the most ideal, the gold standard option.
The second standard is warm-up modification, that's an easy one anyone can do. And doing an ice slushy, most people can do that, get some carbohydrate mix, ice, put it in a blender, put it in a metal bottle, and that will stay pretty slushy for a long time. Anyone can do that. Then ice towels, if you can get your hands on some, get something like an esky or a cooler with ice towels in and use those around the neck area. Not that easy to do, I admit, but that would be a good option. We did some research with the ice slushy and ice towels, and the ice towels were very effective, just as effective as an ice vest, it's just more of a faff because you have to rinse them out and reuse them, and they get warm pretty quick so you have to dip them back in the ice. It's all about increasing your heat sink.
Adam Storey (24:42)
Love that, Plewsy. And the benefit of those ice slushies is they still enable you to get your muscle temperature up while you're warming up specifically, while lowering the actual core temperature down, because you've got that heat sink developing. One shout out to people as well, around ice, this was kind of our golden rule for athletes going overseas, particularly in countries where sometimes the best option is to actually drink bottled water due to contaminants in the tap water.
Dan Plews (25:20)
Yeah.
Adam Storey (25:22)
So just be mindful around ice as well, we'd always be very particular about making our own ice from bottled water. If you're just getting it from street vendors and stuff, sometimes you can get quite a crooked gut, not ideal for a race, so just be mindful of that.
Dan Plews (25:36)
Yeah, for people racing in Bangkok, if you're thinking of doing that, just be a bit careful. Do you think the bagged ice might be an option, or is that still dodgy?
Adam Storey (25:47)
I'd probably go super safe to be honest, if it were me and my athletes I'd ideally try to make my own ice.
Dan Plews (25:54)
Yeah, it's a really good point. I lived in Southeast Asia for four years and I never really got a dodgy gut from it, but I was always mindful of it, and one big thing we always found was the shower, opening your mouth in the shower, in Malaysia and places like that, so contamination. Anyone travelling to Southeast Asia, keep everything shut in the shower.
Adam Storey (26:27)
Just wanted to check that, mate. But before we move on from Chiba, we need to give a shout out to Shannon Prophet from Endurox, because she crushed it, third in her age group in the pro women forty to forty-four, and thirteenth overall, pretty good, and third in the mixed doubles as well.
Dan Plews (26:58)
Amazing.
Adam Storey (26:58)
And I had the great honour of following her around the race course in Stockholm, being the best version of a cheerleader I could.
Dan Plews (27:09)
Did you get your pom poms out?
Adam Storey (27:14)
Always. Lovely, lovely lady, very humble, but a really great mindset when she's out on that race course, she's deep in that pain cave, but still a complete machine.
Dan Plews (27:25)
Machine anyway. Do you want to talk a bit about David as well?
Adam Storey (27:36)
David, yes, sorry, David Barton. This guy, I have a great amount of respect for this individual, he's just a good bugger all around. I worked with him, trained him up for the men's doubles pro in Stockholm. David has come from a semi-professional AFL Australian rules football background, massive engine, these guys are running around fifteen or sixteen kilometres a game.
David and his partner Tom Carran [?] just sent it, bats out of hell, in Stockholm, really great to work with. Then in Chiba, he was over there for work, had a quick look at the race schedule and decided to give a men's open solo a go, he'd never done a pro open solo before.
Dan Plews (28:46)
How did he manage to wangle that, of all the places, at all the times of year, that he just so happened to be in Chiba at the same time there's a HYROX going on?
Adam Storey (28:56)
I know, mate. Perth is his next main race, that's the weekend after next, but Chiba just popped up, so he managed to score a ticket. He'd never raced a pro open solo before, our goal was to go sub-sixty, we'd done a sim leading into it to feel it out and he went high 58, so he had quite a bit of confidence going in. But race day can be a completely different kettle of fish, and man, the dude is an absolute weapon, a great athlete all round, executed his race strategy to the tee, but unfortunately he was just over that sub-60 mark, an hour forty-four, forgive me Dave if I've misquoted that, but it was just over the sixty mark.
Dan Plews (29:50)
One hour forty-four minutes.
Adam Storey (29:54)
Yeah, third overall, first in his age category, but then the man had to grab his kit and go straight to the airport, sweaty as anything, to fly home, because of the work trip. Thank you for that, David Barton, watch this space in Perth, he's a legend.
Dan Plews (30:17)
How good's that. Good weekend all round, and Josh is racing again in Bangkok, so let's go. A couple of other things we're going to talk about today, a little bit about the HYROX Young Stars that you're involved in, and a shout out to HYROX 365. You and I, you were on the Scientific Advisory Council last year and I'm joining you this year, so it'll be cool to have two Endurox coaches, a hundred percent of the workforce from Endurox, on the Scientific Advisory Council, which is good.
We've also got a shout out because Level 2 for the HYROX 365 educational course is out, and any coaches listening, get involved, because we've had some pretty big contributions to the lessons in terms of exercise physiology. Can you remember your exact modules?
Adam Storey (31:27)
Not the exact titles, but I know I did pieces around muscle physiology, how muscle responds and adapts to different types of training, strength training versus power type training, how to structure training accordingly to get the best out of different fibre types. Then you and I did some combined lectures as well, where we talked about adaptation.
Dan Plews (31:54)
I think we had a couple that were combined, exercise testing and measurement we did together.
Adam Storey (32:02)
That's right, and we did an adaptation one together as well.
Dan Plews (32:07)
That was it, exercise adaptation. I did cardiovascular and respiratory physiology as a module, thermoregulation and hydration, metabolism and energy systems, environmental physiology, so a bit about altitude and heat, exercise testing and measurement that you and I did together, and I also did the masters athlete module. I don't know if they asked me to do that because I'm just an old git now, but I actually quite like it, because I also did the International Olympic Committee course for Masters Athletics as well, so I'm becoming a bit more knowledgeable in that area, and it obviously interests you more as you get older.
It's been really good, and it's not just us, there are seventeen total contributors, Anthony Parazzini [?] is one of them, shout out to Anthony, and the Head of ISMA [?] is another one, loads of great speakers. If you're a HYROX coach, check out HYROX 365 and the Level 2 course, I think you have to have done Level 1 first, but it's the next level of education.
Adam Storey (33:35)
It is. I was talking to somebody about it this week, they were asking what's a good coaching accreditation, so I pointed them towards the HYROX certifications and talked through the advantages of doing them. This individual has a PhD in the physiotherapy space, a very qualified individual, based at the University of Ulster, but the advantage of doing the course as an example is he could be officially recognised as a HYROX performance coach, and you get access to the wider network of performance coaches as well.
For a bit of context, Level 1 is very much entry level, covering things like basic anatomy, basic physiology. Level 2, as Plewsy mentioned, is a step up in content detail and in how it's applied to HYROX. In the future there'll eventually be talk of a Level 3, more of a masters-level certification with group discussions where people really chew the fat and compare training methodologies, as opposed to just looking at the theory. That'll be a cool space to get into.
Dan Plews (35:09)
It's all very exciting. I think we pitched Level 2 close to undergraduate level in terms of those basics, so it's not super high level, you're not talking PhD stuff, but I'm hoping most people will learn something from it.
Also, HYROX Young Stars is out, my brother's kids did one in Rotterdam, which was cool. Can you tell us a bit about what you're doing with them in terms of training for the youngsters, because I think that's really important for a lot of our listeners, a lot of them are also parents just like you and I. One of the things we understand is that fitting training around being a busy parent is not an easy task, and you're so busy because you put your kids' sport before your own. Today I go straight from my son's jiu jitsu to coaching his basketball team, that's Sunday, and Kate's taking Bella to synchronised swimming, it's non-stop. We take it seriously in terms of opportunity, but not seriously in terms of outcome. I think it's an important fact that you're trying to help with HYROX Young Stars, do you want to talk a bit about that?
Adam Storey (36:58)
Yeah, thanks mate. I definitely do. The work I'm doing is with our good friend and colleague Piers Plauman [?], shout out to Piers, he's education manager for HYROX 365. Piers and I have been given the task of creating a strength and conditioning framework for the Young Stars programme. The idea is there'll be two broader divisions of the programme, the opportunity for affiliated gyms to roll out a specific Young Stars programme, which would be amazing, but also, future focus, we're thinking Young Stars can be rolled out within schools as part of a PE or physical education curriculum. So there are two different worlds where Young Stars can train and live, one with access to different levels of equipment, versus schools, where we need to cater the training to what schools have available.
What's really important, and the reason I wanted to give this a shout out, is that as you mentioned, Young Stars competitions are now popping up around the world, which is freaking amazing, my son can't wait to get involved. Now we've got a situation where parents just want to understand how to get Johnny, or Bella, or Kelly, up to speed. There are generally two different groups of parents, some don't understand training philosophies and just need resources, versus other parents who might be highly competitive HYROX individuals themselves, thinking, well, if I just give my kids a bit of what I'm currently doing, maybe that's good enough.
Our biggest take-home message that we're driving forward is that all of our programmes are going to be evidence based, following what current youth development research shows is best practice. I love that you mentioned what your kids are up to, with jiu jitsu and basketball, Bella's different sports, because that's critical. Early in development it's all about developing what's termed athletic motor skill competencies, or AMSCs, as opposed to trying to make them HYROX-specific athletes from the age of eight. Our programmes are really trying to take a graded approach, at the youngest HYROX age band, which is eight, a lot of that training is going to be play-based activities where they're having to problem solve within the sessions, like figuring out, if it's a pulling or pushing type task, how can I best position my body to generate the most pull and push force, versus in the higher age bands of Young Stars, the fourteen to fifteen year old category, they'll begin doing more structured sets and reps and exercises that start to replicate what we see in HYROX and Young Stars competitions. Having that distinct progression from a lot of play-based activities, and then beginning to specialise, is absolutely critical.
That's the reason I wanted to give that a shout out, because if there are any parents listening wondering how they should be training their kids up for a Young Stars competition, just hold the phone, the resources are coming. Piers is also furiously working away at creating a Young Stars accreditation as well, so there'll be coaches out there who can do Level 1, Level 2, but in addition become Young Stars accredited coaches, understanding the full methodology of what proper youth development should look like.
Dan Plews (40:45)
I think this is an area we could probably do an entire podcast on, because it's something I'm super interested in, and you are too, and I really believe a lot of parents get it wrong. Specifically, we've got six year olds, eight year olds, and we praise them for being good at a specific sport way too much at a young age, when it has almost nothing to do with overall outcomes.
When you mentioned that, I read an article last week by my good friend David Littlewood [?], who's on our sub-50 paper, shout out to David, we'll get him on the show at some point. He wrote a paper on long-term athlete development, and one of the things he talked about was that if your kid is under ten, they shouldn't be doing the same sport more than twice a week, you want a high diversity of sports. For example, my boy Jake does jiu jitsu, athletics, football, basketball, surf life saving, swimming, all these different things, and he really enjoys doing them all, he wants to go to all of them. It's about that diversity, because one of the things about athlete development is that one is skill, but the second is the environment, and the ability of a child to be in different sporting environments is key for their learning success and their development later on. So you've just got to try many different things.
There's a paper published that looked at Olympic sport athletes across thirteen countries, two thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight athlete responses, forty-three percent of which were female, and they looked at when these Olympic athletes specialised, what their mean specialising age was and their mean starting age. If I go through various sports, tennis, they started at six, specialised at thirteen. You'd assume tennis would be an early specialising sport, but it's actually not. Artistic gymnastics, six and eleven, eight and twelve, but they're still quite late in terms of specialisation. A sport like triathlon, mean starting age seventeen, mean specialising age twenty. But if you look at most sports, hockey, speed skating, weightlifting, taekwondo, wrestling, basketball, mean specialising age fifteen, and mean starting age around eleven, ten, thirteen.
So you don't have to be pushing your kids to be awesome at sports from six to ten, you just get them to do different things, see what they enjoy, see what they naturally have a tendency towards, and that's going to be the best thing you can do, because if they enjoy it and want to do it. It doesn't mean just doing the sport that you think they want to do, or that you enjoy doing. I saw a funny comedy bit the other day, a comedian who said, so I was a Kiwi dad, I looked up how to be a good Kiwi dad on the internet, and the first thing it said was, number one, get them to do sports that you like doing. Number two, get them to play an instrument that you can play.
Adam Storey (44:47)
Yeah, I can say that, I can say it. But that's a cool paper, man, I'll have to have a look at that one.
Dan Plews (44:57)
It's on his Substack, he has a really good Substack, one of the few I really pay attention to. I'll share it with people if you're interested.
Adam Storey (45:12)
Yeah, that's what I've heard.
Dan Plews (45:13)
It's super good for anyone with children, and we'll get David on the show, I've already messaged him about it and he's super keen.
Adam Storey (45:21)
Cool, and so is Piers as well, we need to get Piers on. And actually, there'll always be exceptions to that rule, because people always say, well, what about Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters?
Dan Plews (45:34)
Yeah, exactly.
Adam Storey (45:35)
It's like, yes, but if you've seen Tiger's upbringing, or the Williams sisters', it's a different kettle of fish there, so don't go down that road. But interesting, some sports have quite a few niche exceptions to that rule, the artistic gymnastics one is interesting, because the athletic career of an artistic gymnast, I don't know their exact age when they finish, but their peak age competing, even at the level of the Olympics, is in the teens, you don't see gymnasts in their thirties and forties. That kind of life cycle of their athletic career has been shifted, and I'd say that's one of the niche examples.
Dan Plews (46:29)
Yeah, there's always exceptions to every rule, but at the end of the day this is science, and we have to go with the means and the standard deviations, that's always going to be a starting point, and that's the argument I've had for carbohydrate intake and sodium intake as well. I do think we increasingly live in a world where we have outliers pushing the guidance, which shouldn't be the case, but this is another example, there's always an exception to the rule, but you don't have to be doing that. So don't push old Bobby to do five football sessions a week when he's eight years old, because it's not going to serve him well in the future. So, poor Bobby.
Adam Storey (47:01)
Bobby, leave Bobby alone, plenty.
Dan Plews (47:14)
I don't even know Bobby, but there you go.
Adam Storey (47:18)
On a semi-related note, that comes up under the topic of a lot of things, obviously there's skill acquisition popping in there as well, but there's the idea of balancing volume and intensity, which segues us to another chat, mate.
Dan Plews (47:40)
We could, or actually, I think we should save the high intensity stuff and talk about the study, because I only say that because you've rambled on for too long and we're going to run out of time to talk about the high intensity stuff.
Adam Storey (47:50)
Yes, a hundred percent, I'm all ears, mate, you kick off.
Dan Plews (47:51)
This is a bit of a two-way segment, we've been doing a pilot data study with Charlie Davis from La Trobe, shout out to Charlie. This is a bit of a shout out for participants, because we have pilot data and I'm going to share some of that now. Anyone around the Melbourne area of Australia, please get in touch and be part of this research study.
What the study is looking at is the determinants of HYROX success, a very important key training question for everyone. We're saying, if we look at various aspects of performance, jumping, anaerobic power, body composition, VO2max, lactate threshold running, running economy, maximal strength, which of these measurements are good determinants of success? If we can understand that, it gives us a great framework by which we can start prescribing training. If we find that maximal strength, for example, has a very strong relationship with performance, we can say we should probably train maximal strength as an example.
That's where it's headed. If you're in the Melbourne area, you can get in touch with Charlie via email, c.davids@latrobe.edu.au [?]. We'll get that in the show notes so you can find it, and get involved in the study. You'll get your VO2max, your lactate thresholds, your body composition via a DEXA scan, anaerobic power, jump force, maximal strength, a whole variety of testing done that would otherwise be very expensive to do. It'll be great for your training too, you'll have all your zones done. It's just a few visits to the lab and basically you have to be doing a HYROX close to your testing, so we can look at how your physiology lab results compare to your HYROX time.
So far we've done some pilot testing, eight males through so far, pro and open weight, and I'm going to share some of the results, but we only looked at the running portion so far, no strength markers as of yet. Look at the sadness on Adam's face.
Adam Storey (51:10)
I just changed that completely, my...
Dan Plews (51:13)
What do you mean, no strength? How can this be? That's why we're two people, mate, I'll deal with this part. We did look at the threshold and VO2max, and lo and behold, threshold was a, so you can measure LT2 in different ways, the modified Dmax method had a 0.81 relationship with HYROX finishing time. So far, not that surprising when you think about it. On a regression, as a predictor it predicted about sixty-five percent of finishing time from LT2 running speed.
Adam Storey (52:11)
And what about VO2max, did you look at that?
Dan Plews (52:16)
Yeah, VO2max had an almost non-significant relationship, relatively trivial, the R was about naught point naught six, almost nothing. But this is the main point with these small studies, it's only eight people, and their VO2max ranged from fifty to fifty-seven, a very tight range. It's the same as the argument that often comes up, that VO2max doesn't matter for marathon performance, or doesn't matter for HYROX performance, in a homogeneous cohort of elites, no, if we're dealing with a tight range of VO2max values it doesn't seem to have a big effect. It's the same here, we've got such a tight range, but if we had a whole range of individuals, some athletes down in the thirties, some in the seventies, even the high seventies, you'd then start to see a bigger relationship for sure. So I'd take that with a bit of a pinch of salt, and it's also a harder variable to drive than your threshold.
The other thing that came out was fractional utilisation, the percentage of where your threshold lies relative to your VO2max, that was also a very good predictor, 0.73. This was a cool one from the analysis, and the slope, bearing in mind this is eight people in a very small study, so don't get too excited, but for every one kilometre per hour of speed gained at threshold, you got about six and a half minutes faster on your HYROX.
Adam Storey (54:18)
Wow, that's crazy.
Dan Plews (54:20)
Obviously it's not going to keep going linearly forever, everyone, but that's kind of the linear gains, imagine that. Again, it's why our programmes are so run heavy. With our Endurox Intelligence System, we actually remove your weakest station from the programme if it comes out as running, because we're always so heavy on running anyway, regardless of who you are, because if you can improve your running, it's a gift that keeps on giving.
Another thing that was quite interesting from this, there was also a very strong relationship, the threshold variables predicted functional station time as well, not just running time. LT2 was 0.77 with functional station time. So the better you're running, the better your stations, and it comes back to what we talked about in our sub-50 paper, that the better you're running, the better you can recover, reconstitution of your anaerobic capacity between stations, better station performance. So you have to stop thinking that being a better runner in HYROX is only going to improve your running performance, it's going to improve your station performance too, it had a very big indication of that. Of course there are other things to consider, if you're running better you're probably just a bit fitter generally, so you're able to do the stations more too.
Super interesting, but when we get the full study, full data, we'll have anaerobic power, the thirty second Wingate test, some strength tests, muscular endurance tests as well, it's going to be really cool.
Adam Storey (56:29)
Question for Dr Plews. My understanding, that relationship between LT2 and station performance, was that combined station time or did you look at individual stations?
Dan Plews (56:46)
It was combined station times, the next one will be to look at individual stations as well.
Adam Storey (56:56)
Yeah, that'd be crazy, very cool. And again, just an amazing study, and another plug for our listeners, mate, just to reinforce it's not going to cost them anything if they want to participate. Do you know roughly the time commitment, how many visits and so on?
Dan Plews (57:14)
I can't remember the exact number, but you'll complete two testing sessions at La Trobe University, roughly two to two and a half hours each, so four to five hours in the lab, which by research standards, everyone, Adam and I have been involved in a bit of research with various PhD students, that is nothing, that's very good. And you get a lot out of it, all those testing results, because you can't test everything in one day, and there'll be a little bit of familiarisation as well.
So if you want to get involved and you're in the Melbourne area, or if you're really into it and want to fly there, it might actually be cheaper. A lactate lab test alone is about three hundred and fifty dollars just for the lab testing, with the body composition and the anaerobic power you're talking about a thousand dollars worth of testing there. So if you're within reach it might be cheaper to get a plane ticket and get involved.
Adam Storey (58:37)
I reckon gyms and training squads should just organise a road trip out to La Trobe.
Dan Plews (58:43)
Yeah, if you're a gym owner and you want your athletes tested, this is your prime opportunity.
Adam Storey (58:54)
Training camp down in Melbourne, send it.
Dan Plews (58:55)
Alright, cool. Well, that's, mate, that's bang on an hour, like we always get to.
Adam Storey (59:03)
Well, not quite an hour, if we slow our speech down a little we'll get to sixty minutes on the dot, if we're going sub-sixty, mate, since that's the theme for Bangkok, then we'll keep it sub-sixty.
Dan Plews (59:12)
Exactly. Racing this weekend, anyone interested in checking out Endurox, please do, we have the Endurox Intelligence System out now, and you can test it seven days for free. What do you want to say, Dr Storey?
Adam Storey (59:31)
Just keep sending it, team. We love the chat coming through from our community, the Endurance Society community, and from people further reaching than that too, so keep it coming through. We'll be answering some questions as well, if you've got some, just send them through, we'll do our best to answer them.
Dan Plews (59:50)
I think next time, in two weeks, we're either going to have a guest, who knows who that'll be, we've got a few on the cards, or we can do a Q and A, I think a Q and A would be popular.
Adam Storey (1:00:06)
Yes, yes, yes, with Barack Obama.
Dan Plews (1:00:10)
That'd be very popular. Alright team, we will speak soon. Ciao, ciao.
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Uncertain names/spellings - confirm before publishing:
- Fabian Eisenlauer (Chengdu men's winner) - spelling not verified
- Calypso [surname unclear] and Joanna Vietrich (new female doubles pairing) - spellings not verified
- Lauren Weeks (women's doubles world record holder referenced) - spelling not verified
- Cole Learn (men's pro athlete discussed at length) - spelling not verified, could be "Cole Leiviska" or similar
- Heath Davy (friend of the show) - spelling not verified
- Jake Williamson - spelling not verified
- Heidi Wismer (tall athlete strong at sled pull) - this name is unclear on the audio, may be mis-transcribed
- Tom Carran (David Barton's doubles partner) - spelling not verified
- Piers Plauman (HYROX 365 education manager) - likely "Piers Plowman," not verified
- Anthony Parazzini (HYROX 365 Level 2 contributor) - spelling not verified
- "Head of ISMA" - unclear whether this is a name or a title/organisation reference
- David Littlewood (co-author on the sub-50 HYROX paper, wrote the long-term athlete development piece) - spelling not verified
- Charlie Davis's email, c.davids@latrobe.edu.au - reconstructed from a garbled spoken version ("c.davids at latrobe.com e-e-d-u-e-d-u"), please confirm the exact address before publishing
