Team Talk: Catch Up With UK HYROX Ace, Michael Sandbach
HYROX is on an unrelenting march. As a truly accessible functional fitness challenge, they seem to have tapped into the market for gym-goers wanting to compete. Since their founding in 2017, the event already hosts events in 30 cities across 11 countries. There growth is not predicted to slow down any time soon.
The last two seasons has seen the very quickest of athletes distance themselves from the 30,000+ other competitors that lace up each year. The sport of HYROX has emerged, with a World Championship race for a few handfuls of the most elite, taking part in a special event held in Las Vegas last year.
For the 22/23 incarnation, there is now another stage - championship races held in North America and Europe. The Europeans were first to go, with 15 of the top men and 15 of the top women meeting in Maastricht, The Netherlands, last weekend. A podium finish would guarantee a spot at the World Championships, which this year are being held in Las Manchester.
The fastest British man, is Michael Sandbach. One of the strongest athletes in the highly-competitive field, Sandy arrived in The Lowlands intending to win and put his rivals on notice. Leading for much of the race, it didn't end up quite going exactly to plan.
MH sat down for coffee with Michael the morning after the race to find out how his body felt, where his head was at and what advice he would give to regular people like us wanting to do well at HYROX this year.
Men’s Health How are you feeling after yesterday?
Michael Sandbach: Quite stiff, as you can imagine. I’ve been doing HYROX just over a year now and I think the more I race, the better I seem to recover. I could go out for a run now. It’s not like I’m destroyed. Physically, I really don’t feel too bad.
What was your sport or style of training before HYROX?
In terms of events, all I did was the occasional marathon or half. I’ve got my own gym in my garage, so I never signed up elsewhere. I was just in my garage, following CrossFit-type workouts. It was a good foundation. I’ve always been a good runner and have always been quite strong. Then I’ve spent the last 13 months focusing on HYROX and building from that base.
All the elite athletes are real people with real jobs, right? What do you do for a living?
I'm an engineer in the wind and gas industry. I’m based from home but I do have to travel offshore sometimes to rigs and things. I have my set programme that I try and follow when I'm away, but I have to improvise sometimes. There are always gyms offshore and normally some weights, or I just have to cobble something together with bodyweight.
When you’re at home, what does a normal day of training look like?
I go to bed about 9pm and get up at 5pm. I do a run in the morning - either a long, easy zone two run, or a fast interval type run once or twice a week. Then I get back and started on work for the morning. I’ll have an extended lunch about 11:30am until about 1.30pm, and that's when I'll go to the gym. I have a PT who looks after my strength stuff. I come home to do some more work and after that I go into the gym in the house, normally for a conditioning session, some erg splits or intervals, for maybe 40 minutes. In total, for the day, it’s around three hours training. I don’t do it all every single day. This is the plan for four days a week.
Does it ever feel like a grind?
Oh, yeah. Towards the end of a training block, coming up to a race, it’s tough. Right now, I’ve got a lovely de-load week ahead of me before I start to build up for the next one. But towards the end of each block, I’m questioning everything! The baby will keep me up one night, then I've got three hard sessions the next day and I've got a hit my split times. I want to hit certain weights on my squats. It can feel like too much sometimes.
How much do you eat to train that much?
4500 calories a day. A huge bowl of porridge in the morning and about 140g of oats in a protein smoothie first thing. Then my second breakfast after the early morning session is scrambled eggs milk, salmon, two rounds of toast, spinach and avocado. Then I have an energy bar before my lunchtime session and a banana protein smoothie after that. Mid-afternoon I’ll have chicken or steak with rice and vegetables. Our evening meal is a Gousto, so that’s always a nice change. Before bed, I’ll have some Greek yoghurt. It’s six or seven meals a day but I keep it pretty much the same, so I don’t have to think.
Is it a balancing act trying to maintain strength but stay lean to run fast?
I'm good on the sleds, because I'm strong and I can also run well but there has to be a balance. If I get too bulky, then it's going to impede everything. I want to be strong but not big and that’s hard to do. My aim now is to become neurologically stronger, rather than packing on extra muscle.
Have you had a chance to process the race? You looked frustrated at the finish.
It’s because I felt like I had the race won, if I’m honest. I was so comfortable. After the row and the farmers carry, I had quite a bit of time on Alexander [Roncevic] and I thought I could win it. I felt good. Then I got to the lunges and I didn't feel good. There was no chalk out for me when I got to the farmers carry, which really annoyed me. I was fuming because that made me stutter. I've never gone unbroken on farmers carries without chalk but I picked them up anyway and I did do the lot without dropping them.
Then came the lunges. They have never been my strongest workout and yesterday’s lunge was up there with one of my worst. Finally, I have this mental thing on the last movement, which is the wall balls. Last year, at the same race, I quit. I was in second behind Tobias [Lautwein] and I got a few no-reps on the wall balls and walked off and quit.
As I was running into the wall ball station yesterday, I started to get those horrible thoughts. Alex was nine reps ahead of me when I got going. Tim [Wenisch] was 15 reps behind me, which is quite a nice amount to have. You should be able to beat somebody comfortably with that buffer. But then I lost my head again and he overtook me. I wouldn't have walked off. But I I don't know what it is. I punched the rig and I got mad. I could see Tobias churning them out and I couldn’t fathom going from nearly winning it to, potentially, fourth place. I just carried on and got through it. I came third and got my spot for the World Championships in Manchester, which is good. It was my personal best time and it was a long course getting in and out of the workouts. But I know that I can do better. I think I can win it all.
What do you feel is your strongest section?
The sleds, for sure. I never break on the sled push and just do each full length, then turn around for the next one. Most people break. But I feel like if you do break, while you do get your breath back, you’ve got to get the momentum going to push the thing again and that takes so much more effort than if you just keep going. I just suffer the pain. I know I'm going to be stumbling off it but I'm already running and moving then. So, I’m strongest on the sled, I’m strong at rowing. I just need to be solid on wall balls and lunges.
What is it about the lunges that gets you?
I just struggle with them. I have those demons in my head but it's going to hurt no matter what. It hurts for everyone. I always go through the pain barrier. I just stopped and paused too much. I just need to carry on. It’s because I'm pre-empting the wall balls, you know? I don't want to put myself in a hole at station seven, because I know what's coming up at station eight. The crowd is always right there; the anxieties are there. I've got bad history with wall balls, so I try and pull back on the lunges a bit. You can't afford to do that and win a championship race. You need to go all out on every station and ride the pain. Alex really caught up with me on the lunges, even though, at one point, I nearly had a full length on him. You should never be caught when you’re that far ahead and when he did, he probably broke me. He was still only nine wall balls ahead of me, as I said. I could have caught him. But he was doing huge chunks and mine just fell apart…
What should be the focus for the 9-5 athlete getting into HYROX?
Get your aerobic zone running base up. Whatever you’re like at the workouts, you know, without doubt, that half of HYROX is running. Get that base up. You can make up so much more time on the runs than on the movements. Think about the ski - even if somebody goes 20-30 seconds faster, you can catch them in one run. If you’re running 30 seconds faster per lap, it adds up to a lot over the course of the event. I see people blasting it out the ski and I think the risk-to-reward ratio is minimal. Some of the Elite guys really blast the ski, but for only a few extra seconds it can make a huge difference to your heart rate and your fatigue. Pull back a smidge whenever you feel you can to keep your heart rate under control. Once you tip over out the top of your threshold, that’s when things get rough.
Do you do any compromised running, or blast a run and then move straight onto a workout?
I don't do that much, to be honest. I know a lot of people do get in that style in multiple time every week and if that works for them, cool. I don't feel like I need to. I'd rather split my sessions out and have a proper focus for each one. If I can get faster; get my top speed up, I think the carry-over is massive. More than anything, I need to race more to improve the mental side of things. When you're training, you can never put yourself under that kind pressure. Racing is not enjoyable and I need to get used to that as much as possible. But then I don’t just want to race all the time because it will mess up my training blocks.
Perhaps I should do some races just to practice a few things. Hunter [McIntyre] did it last year. He went into one race just to see how hard he could do the ski and then dropped out. Then in LA, he did the ski and the sleds and then dropped out. He just wanted to see where he was physically and mentally. I understand that. I’d like to try it. I’d like to see where I am and find out where I dan push a bit harder, make that gap bigger and feel more comfortable at the end. Or simply chill bit and use it as training and race conditioning. I don't care if I win or not. I've got my place for the World Championships. I just need to go back, get to the wall balls and try and do 60 unbroken. To break that barrier in my head. I can do more. I need to push through the pain.
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