Your race time will not be on your gravestone

Markus Frison won the 2020 Virtual Hyrox World Championships and competed in the Hyrox Elite 15. He now works as a full-time Hyrox coach. Last season, 36 of Markus’ athletes qualified for the Hyrox World Championships. Workouts created by Markus and North American Hyrox Champion Dylan Scott are a regular feature in this newsletter.

The Hybrid Letter chatted with Markus about what it takes to compete at an elite level, his approach to working with new athletes, and controlling your nerves before a big race. 

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

The Hybrid Letter: How did you start in competitive sports? 

Markus Frison: My family doesn’t have a big sporting background, but some kids at school did cycling races. At the age of 6, I went with them to do a training session. The coach said I had a lot of potential. My first race was at age 7, and success came pretty early. Around age 15, my muscles started growing, and I became better and better. I made the national team at age 15. At 17, I had a big crash at the German nationals so I couldn’t compete for rest of the season. I lost my place on the national team. I stopped training it and struggled. I was a party professional for a year after that. 

I wanted something where I could compete on a high international level without training that much. I started powerlifting. But deadlifting, squatting, and benching got boring. At some point, I watched a Netflix documentary about Crossfit. I was able to get to a pretty high level in CrossFit, pretty quickly. Then, I had an injury in 2020 coming down from a rope climb. I was laying in bed with an injured ankle, looking for something else. I  randomly saw Hyrox was holding a virtual World Championships during COVID. And there was prize money. From there, I got sucked into the Hyrox world. 

I started a coaching business and focused on training and competing at a high level. But I had health issues for the whole season last year. So I decided to just focus on coaching for awhile. Now, two years into coaching, I am at the point where I want to come back as an athlete. 

THL: What is the hardest part of competing at the elite level in Hyrox?

MF: Hyrox is different today. In 2021 or 2022, you could get in the Elite 15 with 10 hours of training a week. These days, it is much more. You don’t see anyone competing in the Elite 15 below 18 hours of training a week. If you think about it, that is three hours of quality training a day, six days a week. If you count driving to the gym, getting ready for workouts, and recovery, you are looking at five or six hours a day. If you have a full-time job, you are going to struggle. 

You need a supportive family or supportive partner. I hope the prize money increases and more athletes get a chance to do it full-time. 

THL: As a coach, how do you approach working with a new athlete?

MF:  When someone signs up, we call the athlete to speak and talk about their experience, their training, and get a picture of their past. Then we speak about the future and setting realistic goals together. Based on that, we create the first training week, which is mostly a mix of benchmark tests and normal training volume. 

We test and retest everything every four to eight weeks. After the first week of training, we do another call to discuss if the volume and how it fit in with the rest of their life. We are in contact with the athletes every few days. 

THL: How do you approach working with an athlete who is brand new to Hyrox? 

MF: We really focus on trying to get their base fitness as high as possible. Many people think you have to do Hyrox-specific work all day long. But athletes perform better based on their general fitness. We try to get in six months of off season training where we don’t focus on Hyrox stations and do running, rowing, biking, swimming, strength, and hypertrophy work. We do three months where we touch the stations but also combine them with other movements. And then three months where we compete. In general, we try to build athletes before we go specific.

THL: How do you approach tapering training before a race? 

MF: It is super important. We know that no real adaptations are going to happen in the last two weeks. When we look at aerobic adaptations, it takes up to 12 days. Two weeks out, we try to get athletes into an easier first half of the week to get them mentally and physically fresh. Then, I send them into a hard session one week before the race. That is just a confidence booster. You want an athlete to take something positive from the last important session. In the last week, most of my athletes are going to rest two days and we reduce training volume by 30%.

THL: How do you help athletes overcome nerves? 

MF: It is important to show athletes what they have done in the training. They need to know they've done the work. The more relaxed they are, the more relaxed their muscles will be, and they will perform better. 90 minutes before the start you can turn on the music and get into the zone but there is no point in getting nervous before it. The race is not changing your life. Your time won’t be engraved on your grave stone. The right people are not going to not like you because of your race time. In the race, smile and enjoy the pain. 

Follow Markus on Instagram or visit The Frison Method to learn more about his coaching and training programs. 

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Podcast of The Week: The origins of Concept2

On How I Built This, brothers Dick and Peter Dreissigacker tell the story of how they created the Concept2 rower and built it into a 9-figure business. 

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Workout of the Week: Grip Ripper!

Each edition of The Hybrid Letter features a workout from Dylan Scott, the Hyrox North American Champion, and Markus Frison.

Hybrid athlete of the week: Dan Kain

Name: Dan Kain
Age: 31
Hometown: Phoenixville, PA

When did you start hybrid training?: I've been both running and weight-training on and off for most of my life. Doing both always made sense to me. The complementary effects of strength and conditioning training together were made apparent to me at a young age as a football and track & field athlete. But I never ran more than a mile until 2019, when I trained for a 10-mile road race. It wasn't until 2021, when I found The Conditioning Room in Arlington, VA, that I began a strength training program and really started hybrid training. Since then I've achieved fitness goals I never in my life thought possible, including becoming a 1-0 amateur (charity) boxer.

Favorite race to date?: My number one is the 2022 BPN Half Marathon because the energy and environment at this race were unmatched. The race was held at a private ranch in TX, with only 200 total runners. I met so many great people from all across the US, and we've since become friends. 

Do you have a race goal? For my next Hyrox singles race, I want to go  sub-1:10. I'm also running my first marathon this November in Philly.

Favorite station? The rower because it gives me an opportunity to turn my brain off for a few minutes and zone out. I feel like I have a fairly efficient stroke, so it feels like the eye of the storm to me.

Least favorite station? Wall balls. Sled push. Burpee broad jumps. Sled pull. Sandbag lunges. In that order. 

Things you wish you knew when you started training/racing?: That once you open the door to any fitness competition, you probably won't close it. Every race is an hour of misery, and then multiple days of post-race endorphins and elation that trick you into forgetting how miserable you were during the race. The positive twist is that you will continually surprise yourself with how strong you are, mentally and physically.