Hyrox: A New Kind of Fitness Challenge for Endurance Athletes

I must admit that I was both excited and confused when I was first told about Hyrox. Confused because, with limited knowledge, I wasn’t sure if this was an endurance event or a functional fitness / strength focused competition. Excited because well, I come from a multi-disciplinary sports background centred around triathlon and any new event where there are different disciplines and skills performed continuously with transitions, will always get me psyched.

When CrossFit first became a thing, I was intrigued. I am talking specifically about the competitions not so much the lifestyle or exercise philosophy. Obviously these are intrinsically linked but I was interested to see if an athlete such as myself, with a high level of cardiovascular conditioning but little to no muscular strength, or coordination for that matter, would be able to compete without changing too much about the way that I train or the way that my body is put together. In peak shape I will weigh in the mid-60kg range, so I am not what you would call a big or even average sized human. I would still want to compete in my specialist events where power to weight is the determining factor of success but I was hoping that maybe I could dabble in some CrossFit competition on the side.

Well, as you were reading that I am sure you answered a very emphatic no. What someone like me would be able to achieve in the running, cycling, swimming and bodyweight type exercises would be completely overshadowed by the weights used in most of the functional movements. I have no trouble admitting that I could probably not even get one rep out of most activities. So, without a serious commitment to the sport, CrossFit was definitely not going to be something that someone like myself would be able to compete in.

Then along comes Hyrox and I am analysing these events with the same ambition in mind…

What exactly is Hyrox some may be asking? Because I can’t describe it any better, this is pulled directly from Hyrox.com, “Hyrox is based upon an idea by Upsolut Sports founder Christian Toetzke of combining functional movements and running in an indoor fitness competition. Hyrox consists of a 1 km run followed by one workout, repeated 8 times. In order to complete the entire Hyrox race and receive a valid finishing time, the participants must complete the runs and workouts in the designated order (run, workout, run, workout, etc.) until they have completed a total of 8 km running and 8 workouts. While repetitions and/ or weights differ between the divisions, the running distance remains the same across all divisions: each participant must run 1 km before each workout, i.e. a total distance of 8 km.”

The different functional exercises and the weights used are listed in the table below (also courtesy of hyrox.com)

Never having pulled or pushed a sled, I am not sure if those sorts of weights are within my capabilities. I may not even be able to get the thing moving. The rest… I think I could manage without setting the World alight with my performance. What I do know is that someone like me would run a decent amount of time into athletes who are more capable of smashing out these functional segments of the competition but it will be interesting to see if that would be enough to compensate for our obvious weaknesses.

Another aspect that should not be underestimated, just as in triathlon, is what each of the disciplines takes out of the ones that follow. So, I am thinking I could smash one kilometre, giving myself a bit of a head start for the following exercise but, running at that speed should also take less out of me than someone who carries a lot more weight in muscle, which demands a lot of oxygen but won’t necessarily make them run faster. The flipside of that is, doing something like a sled pull or push will take a lot of unaccustomed effort from me and should probably affect my running in the next 1km. Far more than it would the more strength orientated athlete.

This is exactly what intrigues me about Hyrox and any multi-disciplinary competition. Getting the balance right is tricky and, during an event, there will always be athletes who move up in their speciality and drop back in their weaker disciplines. What I really would like is an event that allows a good competition between two very different types of athletes: endurance specialists and functional fitness specialists. CrossFit certainly wasn’t that but is Hyrox? There is definitely more endurance biased running, Ski Erg and Rowing and the overall duration of the whole event is also in favour of the endurance athlete, but will that be balanced by the heavier stuff or overshadowed by it?

There really is only one way to find out and that is to have a go. I’ll hopefully see you at an Hyrox event in the not too distance future. I’ll be the skinny, nervous looking dude who keeps his shirt on throughout…