Learn how CrossFit veteran Brooke Wells shifted to HYROX, and what her new routine reveals about concurrent training and recovery for older endurance athletes.
On August 31, 2026, Mindbodygreen published a detailed profile on 10-time CrossFit Games athlete Brooke Wells. The article detailed her retirement from CrossFit in 2025 and her entry into a first HYROX competition just nine weeks later. Wells spent a decade preparing for the CrossFit Games, a multi-event format that can involve 10 to 15 events across three days. HYROX presents a vastly different physical challenge for athletes shifting disciplines.
HYROX follows a standardized format of eight repetitions of a 1-kilometer run alternating with eight functional workout stations. This design creates a total of 8 kilometers of running alongside continuous strength demands. Wells noted that neither sport is inherently easier to conquer. CrossFit involves repeated short and high-intensity efforts, whereas HYROX requires athletes to sustain a demanding pace for an hour or longer.
The central shift for Wells was not simply adding cardiovascular work to an existing program. Before changing sports, she lifted weights five or six days per week. Her HYROX-oriented schedule reduced CrossFit to two or three weekly sessions and increased running to three or four sessions. This structural change represents a deliberate reallocation of weekly training time from frequent lifting toward endurance development.
Many amateur athletes make the mistake of piling new endurance requirements on top of their established weightlifting routines. This aggressive layering often leads to severe fatigue and diminished returns in both disciplines. Reallocating hours ensures that the body has the necessary physiological resources to adapt to the new aerobic stimulus. The goal is to build a highly sustainable weekly rhythm.
Pacing quickly became a primary focus for her new routine. Wells described pacing as a central adjustment because athletes cannot start too aggressively. She had to learn how hard she could push while maintaining effort for an hour plus. To achieve this, she uses different types of runs rather than repeating the exact same session every time.
Understanding proper pacing prevents the common error of treating long events like a series of disjointed sprints. This shift in mindset is incredibly important for anyone transitioning from a high intensity background. Building an intuitive sense of pacing requires dedicated time on your feet. Consistent aerobic practice trains the body to clear lactate efficiently over extended periods.
Her schedule includes one or two runs of approximately 70 minutes to build endurance and practice race pacing. She adds structured interval training on her other running days. Wells framed this complete change as evidence that a training routine can successfully evolve as an athlete's goals and life change. This evolution requires resetting expectations about weekly mileage and overall fatigue.
Wells calls recovery non-negotiable but insists the most effective foundations are simply nutrition and sleep. She uses other tools like the sauna, stretching, and foam rolling. She also incorporates occasional ice baths and red-light therapy. However, she explicitly places those specific tools after nutrition and sleep in her recovery hierarchy.
Her approach treats proper recovery as a scheduling priority rather than an equipment problem. Her mornings are considered sacred time to set the tone for the day. She generally wakes approximately two hours before training, makes coffee, and avoids her phone for at least 30 minutes. She explained this phone-free period as a clear strategy to avoid waking up and immediately feeling behind for the day.
This morning buffer creates enough time for proper hydration, basic food preparation, and a calm transition into the physical session. Her evening routine includes a chocolate drink mixed with magnesium, which she treats as a relaxing ritual before bed. Logistics and timing play a massive role in how she structures these daily habits. Wells spent months investigating recurring afternoon energy crashes.
She concluded that using the sauna immediately after her morning gym session contributed to the problem, so she moved relaxing activities to after work. Her broader principle is to avoid adding unnecessary stress to a life that already contains substantial physical demands. This is a highly useful example of monitoring the interaction between training, recovery practices, and professional obligations. Athletes balancing complex lives must treat recovery routines as supporting mechanisms for the whole day.
The combination of endurance running and functional strength makes HYROX a highly visible case study in concurrent training. While an individual athlete's routine does not validate a universal program, broader research provides important context. An updated systematic review and meta-analysis hosted by James Cook University examined how combining different training modes impacts muscle tissue. The researchers concluded that concurrent aerobic and strength training does not generally compromise muscle hypertrophy or maximal strength.
These scientific findings validate the core structure of modern hybrid training programs. Athletes can clearly improve their cardiovascular engine without automatically sacrificing their hard earned muscle mass. The key variable is how these two distinct training modes interact within a single weekly schedule. Intelligent programming prevents the widely feared interference effect from derailing overall athletic progress.
The James Cook University review did note a potential training tradeoff. Explosive-strength gains may be attenuated, particularly when both training modes occur in the exact same session. This specific finding highlights why weekly scheduling is especially important for adult athletes who want to preserve both their aerobic endurance and heavy lifting performance. The science clearly supports the idea that an athlete can remain highly functional and strong while shifting primary emphasis toward aerobic capacity.
Separating intense aerobic work from heavy lifting sessions gives the nervous system adequate time to recover. Older adults typically require longer recovery windows between maximal efforts compared to younger competitors. This biological reality makes the intelligent spacing of workouts an absolute necessity rather than a mere suggestion. Respecting these biological limits ultimately extends an athlete's competitive lifespan.
The transition from a pure strength focus to a hybrid endurance event requires adult athletes to seriously rethink their priorities. The most actionable lesson is to create room for a new priority by reducing lower-priority work. Endless addition leads to severe overtraining, especially for those balancing employment, family, and athletic goals. Older athletes must preserve purposeful strength training while managing fatigue and avoiding maximal efforts daily.
Treating recovery as a strict scheduling problem is critical for maintaining long-term consistency. Recovery practices must support the entire day and not leave an athlete completely depleted before important work obligations. Tracking sleep, soreness, mood, and workday function can help athletes accurately adjust volume when patterns deteriorate. Moving a sauna session to the evening is a highly practical example of fitting recovery into daily life smoothly.
In our experience, adapting your schedule is the only way forward. "Hitting my forties brought a harsh reality check," our team notes. "The track workouts were not getting slower, but the days after them felt significantly heavier. Instead of forcing my old Tuesday and Thursday intensity schedule, I looked at the data on Masters athletes and muscle protein synthesis."
"I pushed my second hard session to Friday, allowing an extra forty eight hours of low intensity recovery," the reflection continues. "My total weekly volume stayed the same, but the quality of my intervals skyrocketed."
Adults returning to running or increasing their running frequency must account for connective tissue adaptation rather than just cardiovascular fitness. Building aerobic capacity is only part of the complex training equation. Varied running sessions, like combining 70-minute controlled runs with shorter intervals, help develop proper pacing without risking immediate overuse injuries. Reendure consistently advocates for this highly measured approach to the daily life behind endurance sport.
Rushing the adaptation process frequently results in entirely preventable soft tissue injuries. The tendons and ligaments adapt much slower than the heart and lungs during the initial months of a new running block. Patience during this transitional phase secures long-term durability and athletic longevity. Veterans know that staying injury-free is the single most important metric for overall success.
A major shift in competitive sports also requires a massive shift in personal identity. Athletes moving into hybrid events must define success using the actual demands of the new event. Judging a new sport entirely by old performance benchmarks is a guaranteed path to severe frustration. We must clearly define the new sport's dominant demand and rethink traditional weekly schedules to adapt appropriately.
While elite profiles provide excellent inspiration, ambitious older athletes should build their hybrid programs around sufficient sleep, adequate nutrition, and a sensible reallocation of weekly training hours.
Follow ReEndure for practical insights on endurance training, recovery, nutrition and healthy aging. Stay connected for new articles, research led guidance and ideas to help you perform better for longer.
Read practical ideas on endurance training, recovery, nutrition and healthy aging to keep progressing for years to come.
Read the Blog