Peptides for Hyrox Athletes: The Sim-Week Recovery Cycle

Station Six to Station Seven

This is what Hyrox-style training compresses into a single race. Eight kilometers of running. Eight strength and conditioning stations: SkiErg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, row, farmer's carry, sandbag lunges, wall balls. Total elapsed time for amateur athletes typically runs 60 to 120 minutes. The cumulative load is what makes the format unique. No single-discipline sport puts running, lower-body grinding, upper-body pulling, and explosive movement into the same hour.

The Sim Is the Engine of the Week

Most endurance peptide content treats training as a monthly arc: base build, build block, peak, recovery. Hyrox-style training has a different organizing principle. The week is the unit, and the weekly sim (a full or partial simulation of the race format) is the engine of that week. A serious Hyrox athlete's training week is built around protecting the sim, recovering from it, and building the layers that support it.

This guide is organized that way. Each section walks through one slot of the sim-week cycle and what role peptide therapy plays in it. The peptides in scope are BPC-157, MOTS-c, and NAD+. All three are prescription-only in the US and require evaluation by a licensed provider.

Sim Day

Sim day is execution. Whatever protocol you ran in the previous 8-12 weeks has either prepared you for this session or it has not. The peptide protocol on sim day itself is minimal: do not introduce new variables, do not dose anything pre-session expecting a performance lift, and do not use BPC-157 as a painkiller to push through patellar pain that your body is telling you to respect.

If your NAD+ dosing day happens to fall on sim day, the dose goes at the same time of day you always take it (typically morning, before food). Do not move it earlier or later to "boost" the session. The mechanism does not work on that timescale.

What to focus on instead: warmup adequacy, hydration, race-pace fueling rehearsal, and clean technique through the stations that historically degrade for you (the sled push and the sandbag lunges are the usual suspects). The sim is the diagnostic, not the moment to test variables.

The 48 Hours After a Sim

The 24-48 hours after a sim is the highest-leverage window in the entire week for peptide therapy. A full Hyrox sim produces meaningful tissue damage: patellar tendon load from the sled work, lumbar fatigue from the farmer's carry and sandbag lunges, shoulder fatigue from the SkiErg and the row, and the deep aerobic depletion that takes 24-72 hours to clear.

NAD+ at the higher dose 24-48 hours post-sim is the cellular-energy repair window. This is when mitochondrial damage from the race-format demand gets repaired and the systemic recovery actually runs. A common cadence is the elevated NAD+ dose for the first 5-7 days post-sim if you are in a heavy build block, returning to maintenance after.

BPC-157 daily through this window handles the connective-tissue side. Sit bones from the sled work, patellar tendon from the compromised running, shoulder cuffs from the SkiErg. MOTS-c stays at maintenance; the mitochondrial machinery is busy with repair, not adaptation. Sleep and hydration do the rest.

The Middle of the Week

The middle of the week is for moderate work: station-specific skill, intervals on a single modality (running, rowing, SkiErg), heavy slow resistance loading for any tendons that need targeted attention. The peptide protocol shifts to background support.

BPC-157 continues daily if you are in an active block. NAD+ returns to maintenance dose (2-3x weekly). MOTS-c at maintenance dose continuously. For Hyrox athletes who train 4-5 days a week, the mid-week sessions are where progress actually compounds. The sim tells you where you are; the mid-week sessions are where you build.

The Pre-Sim Day

The day before a sim is a micro-taper. Volume drops, intensity is brief and sharp if at all, and the focus is sleep, hydration, and arriving at the sim rested. The peptide protocol does not change for a pre-sim day; do not adjust dosing in anticipation of the sim.

This is also the day where most Hyrox athletes catch errors in their week: missed sleep, undereating, an aggressive Tuesday session that left more fatigue than expected. The right move on pre-sim day is to honor whatever the body is telling you, including the option to push the sim back a day if the fatigue is real.

Race Week

Race week shifts the entire pattern. Sims are out (the last full sim is typically 2-3 weeks before race day). Volume drops sharply. Intensity stays brief and sharp. Sleep, hydration, and travel planning become the priority.

Race-week peptide pattern: MOTS-c tapers to a maintenance dose, since the mitochondrial work is done. BPC-157 moves to held-in-reserve mode; if a tendon or hip flexor flares during race week, you have a tool, but if everything is fine, do not introduce variables. NAD+ continues at maintenance, no race-week adjustment needed.

For race travel, all three peptides are prescription medications in original labeled vials, TSA-permitted in carry-on with refrigerated packaging. A standard soft cooler with two frozen gel ice packs holds the 36-46°F window for 24-48 hours, which covers any normal race travel.

Race Day

Race day is execution. Do not dose anything new on race morning. Whatever your pre-race ritual is, that is the ritual. The peptide protocol is not the lever you are pulling on race day; training is.

One specific note for Hyrox: if you compete in an elite division, anti-doping testing may apply through the integrity program. MOTS-c is on the WADA Prohibited List under S4 (Metabolic Modulators) at all times. If your division is tested, the peptides discussed in this guide are not for you during the competitive season. Verify against the current rules for your specific division before any sanctioned competition.

Between Races

The window between races is where most of the actual structural development happens. For amateurs racing 2-4 Hyrox events per year, the inter-race blocks are 8-16 weeks each and that is where peptide therapy earns its keep.

A common pattern: 1-2 weeks of full recovery immediately post-race (high NAD+, daily BPC-157, MOTS-c off). 2-4 weeks of base rebuilding (NAD+ at maintenance, BPC-157 continuing daily, MOTS-c restarting). Then 4-6 weeks of build-and-sim into the next race week. The protocol does not change dramatically between blocks; what changes is the training stimulus on top of it.

What This Protocol Will Not Do

Hyrox-style training peptide protocols get confused with several things they are not. Four honest distinctions.

Not a substitute for HSR loading. If you have patellar tendinopathy, the evidence-based treatment is heavy slow resistance loading over 12-24 weeks under PT supervision. BPC-157 may shorten that arc somewhat as an adjunct. It does not replace the loading work. Athletes who try to skip the HSR phase because peptides are "doing the healing" usually end up with the same tendinopathy six months later.

Not a VO2 max booster. Published human data on supplemental MOTS-c does not show a direct increase in VO2 max. What athletes who use it report is improved aerobic feel and faster between-session recovery. The race-day expression of VO2 max still depends on the training that built it.

Not a performance enhancer in the stimulant sense. None of these peptides act on race morning the way caffeine or beta-alanine does. They work on weeks-to-months timescales through repair and adaptation signaling. Do not expect a pre-race injection to deliver a PB.

Not a permission slip to skip recovery. The protocol is a layer on top of sleep, nutrition, and load management. If you are sleeping 5 hours a night and training 7 days a week, no peptide stack will save the recovery side of the equation. Foundations first, peptides second.

A Few Practical Questions