Why Recovery Is Not Optional: A Note to Bangkok's Hyrox Crowd
This week thousands of people are lining up in Bangkok for Hyrox, and honestly, it makes me happy to see it. Twenty years ago you would have struggled to find this many hobby athletes in one place in Thailand. Now sled pushes and burpee broad jumps are dinner table conversation. Isn’t it great?!
But I want to say something that might not be popular: a lot of these athletes are training hard and recovering badly, and I think it is quietly holding them back.
Where I'm coming from
I'm touching on 50 now, and sport has been part of my life since before I was 10. I swam competitively through high school and later in the Masters category. I've done a 400 individual medley, swum 5 kilometers from Koh Samed back to the mainland, finished two half Ironmans in Thailand and a full Ironman in Langkawi in 2014. A handful of half and full marathons along the way too. Sometime in my life I also tried cross country skiing, downhill skiing, trail running, crew rowing, soccer, tennis, badminton, fencing, and more recently weight training, and padel.
I say all this not to brag, but because it means I've had a lot of years to watch what actually works and what is just noise. And one thing I've become convinced of, especially as I've gotten older, is that recovery is not the reward you get after training. It is part of the training.
The gap I keep seeing
Talk to most Thai hobby athletes doing Hyrox, or triathlons, or half marathons, and ask about their schedule. You'll hear detailed answers about zone 2 running, VO2 max intervals, hybrid programming, maybe even their creatine dosage. Ask about their last sports massage and you often get a shrug, or "I get a Thai massage sometimes," which is not the same thing at all.
A proper sports massage works on the tissue that took the load. It breaks up adhesions, improves blood flow to muscle that is still repairing, and gives you real information, since a good therapist will feel where you are tight or asymmetric before you even notice it yourself. Skipping that and only ever pushing forward in the gym is like never changing the oil in a car you drive hard every day. It runs fine for a while. Then it doesn't.
The week I actually recommend
Here's the structure I follow and recommend to people who ask:
Two days of light cardio. Easy zone, nothing heroic, just moving blood and keeping the aerobic base alive for around an hour.
Three days of weight training, full body each session rather than a split routine. At this age and for general athleticism I find full body sessions, done well, build more usable strength than isolating body parts. 45 mins to an hour.
One high intensity day. This is where you actually push, intervals, a hard class, a race simulation. One day is enough if the rest of the week supports it properly. Remember to warm up with a light 2km jog!
One full recovery day. Sports massage, and if you have access to it, sauna, ice bath, red light therapy. This is not indulgence. This is the day your body actually adapts to everything you did the other six days.
Every single day, 30 minutes of walking, no exceptions. Rest day, race day, travel day, it does not matter. Walking keeps joints moving, supports circulation, and does not add meaningful fatigue.
What I eat around all this
For nutrition I keep it simple with a 40/40/20 split, 40 percent protein, 40 percent carbohydrate, 20 percent fat. It is not a magic formula, but for someone training across endurance and strength like I do, it gives enough protein to support muscle repair, enough carbohydrate to fuel real training sessions, and enough fat to keep hormones and general health in order.
The real point
None of this is about being extreme. It's the opposite. It's about respecting that the body that lets you train hard at 25 is not the same one you have at 40 or 50, and even in your 20s and 30s, recovery is what turns training into fitness rather than just accumulated fatigue.
So to everyone racing Hyrox in Bangkok this week, congratulations, genuinely. But once the race is done, book the massage. Take the recovery day seriously. Your future training sessions will thank you, and so will your joints in twenty years.
