Doing a series of runs that alternate with exercises may not be everybody’s idea of fun, but Hyrox is a competitive fitness trend that is soaring in popularity.
The mass participation event that was launched in Germany just eight years ago has echoes of recreational marathon running. Cities around the world are hosting affiliated races, for which participants of all ages and abilities now scramble for entry tickets.
“Every body can do it,” according to the Hyrox organisation, which says 99 per cent of competitors complete the course. They run 8km in total, but after each kilometre a specific exercise has to be carried out – including pushing and pulling a weighted sled, and completing 1,000 metres each on row and ski machines and 80 metres of widely dreaded burpee broad jumps. All this might take under an hour for an elite athlete, but several hours for others.
The all-round nature of the physical demands is one of the attractions. The first scientific study into Hyrox, published in the Frontiers in Physiology journal in March, concludes that this form of high-intensity functional training “offers practical applications beyond its competitive nature, including health promotion and tactical population training” and is likely to gain popularity.
The focus on functional fitness makes it accessible to even rookie gym-goers, say trainers, unlike skills-based activities like CrossFit. Participants can also share the load at competitions by entering pair or relay categories. Pairs still have to do all the runs together, but can divvy up the exercises between them however they choose.
Rachel Farrell, head Hyrox coach at CrossFit Claregalway gym in Co Galway, is seeing clients migrate towards the newer format. “What we found is people are coming from CrossFit because they’re saying it was too hard on the body, it was too technical, they were getting so many injuries. Whereas with this, they can maintain a bit of strength, they can maintain cardio – it’s two in one.”
A keen competitor herself, she and a silent business partner founded Hybrid Series Ireland, which is hosting its second “Hyrox simulation” at Athlone TUS, Co Westmeath, this Easter weekend. Booked to full capacity of 1,200 participants, entries have nearly trebled from the 450 at the first event in the same venue last August.
Meanwhile the third annual Dublin Hyrox in the RDS this November, which was a one-day event in the first year, has been extended to four days for 2025. Tickets will go on sale in May.
It was Farrell’s frustration at having only one big event a year in Ireland in which to compete that gave her the idea for an affiliated hybrid series. She knew there would be others like her who find it difficult to get time off to travel to events abroad, and small-scale simulation events at the Claregalway gym were starting to attract people from neighbouring counties. Tadhg Joyce, a weightlifter who represented Ireland at last year’s world junior championships and a student at Athlone TUS, then got involved in the venture.
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Rachel Conway, a mother of two teenagers and member of the Claregalway gym, made her Hyrox debut in Athlone last August as one of a pair. It inspired her to compete in Hyrox Madrid last October, again in the pairs.
The atmosphere at both was brilliant, she says, alluding to the community spirit that is cultivated around this fitness craze, from the grassroots in affiliated gyms – of which there are now more than 300 in Ireland – to the razzamatazz of big competitions. There is nothing like a bit of self-inflicted suffering to bond strangers.
“You’d meet so many different people, like all shapes, all sizes, all fitness levels. Everyone’s just competing to better themselves, and better their own times. There’s no set time that you have to do it in, which is great,” says Conway, who is in her mid-40s and works for the French bank BNP Paribas.
“You finish one [event] and you think, ‘I’m not doing any more.’ You recover for a week, and go, ‘Okay, which one am I going to do now ... ?’ It’s all a bit addictive.”
In contrast, she ran one marathon 10 years ago and says she would definitely never do it again. “My body couldn’t handle that long distance.”
However, she likes to challenge herself and have a fitness goal. Being signed up for an event keeps her motivated to go out for a run or training session – otherwise she might not bother. “You get a buzz out of just competing, especially at this age. I do feel fitter than I’ve ever felt before.”
The hybrid series is intended to be “beginner friendly” and Farrell says “we had all sorts competing in August”, ranging in age from 16 to over 60. She competes individually, at pro-women level.
While pros like her look to compete against others as well as themselves, the good thing about the format, she says, is that there is never a spotlight on anybody. “Nobody knows where you are, you could be taking all day.”
Venue size and space between exercise areas have an impact on how long it takes to complete the course. “For instance, in Dublin, I did a 1.09 and then in America last week, I did a 1.11 but I was way fitter, it was just because the scale of the event was so much bigger.”
The advantage of repeatedly using the same venue in Athlone is that participants will be able to compare like with like when trying to improve their time.
Eoghan Smyth, an IT worker living in south Co Dublin and newcomer to Hyrox, will be competing in the pairs in Athlone. He started training for it in January, having joined a gym only a few months previously, after more than 30 years of sedentary living since playing rugby at school.
At his first Hyrox session he wondered what he had let himself in for, “but once I pushed through that, I started seeing the rewards”. He had been motivated by the gym he attends, DBK Fitness in Glasthule, Co Dublin, promising to reimburse the Athlone entry fee for anybody who tried it but failed to complete the race.
There’s an amazing community in it, so it’s getting people out and doing it together
— Darragh Butler
“There was a lot of confidence in that,” says Smyth, who is one of 18 “newbies” among 32 from the small group training gym who will be taking part this weekend. Is he looking forward to the challenge?
“Yes and no,” he laughs. “You might not always be enjoying it as you do it, but you get a great sense of accomplishment.”
He too, at 50, feels fitter now than he ever has. Having come through addiction, Smyth says he has done a lot of mental and spiritual work and now training for Hyrox is “the physical catchup”.
DBK co-owner Darragh Butler first became interested in Hyrox about two years ago. He was attending an industry event in Belfast, where fitness entrepreneur Phil Graham predicted it was going to be the new big thing and that gym owners should redesign their venues to accommodate it.
“I look his advice on board,” says Butler, who found that it was a style of training he enjoyed too. Hyrox-designated sessions were introduced at the gym in April last year and he sees them as a good addition, while strength and conditioning continue to be the mainstay of programmes. The running part is what puts some people off, he says, so they started a weekly running club to help with that.
“Hyrox is essentially a ‘threshold’ race. I would not consider it a strength race. It’s the amount of capacity that you have to do these exercises.” In short, perhaps, how much pain you can bear.
“There’s an amazing community in it, so it’s getting people out and doing it together. The only people that don’t seem to like it are the people that do CrossFit, because it’s a challenge to them, but I think everyone else sees the benefits,” Butler says.
One of the beauties of Hyrox is to see people stepping outside their comfort zone and developing newfound confidence, he says. A year ago many of his clients would never have dreamt of signing up for something like this.
“Everyone is capable of doing this, but it’s just mustering up the courage to actually go and do it in the first place,” he says.
Butler has competed in a number of events, the latest being in Glasgow in March, where he paired with a client and they aimed to complete it together in under one hour. “We missed it by 20 seconds, so we were a little disappointed.”
Karl Doyle, who opened KDF Strength & Conditioning in Finglas, Dublin, 10 years ago, affiliated with Hyrox last July. There was already a strong community in the gym, he says, and he saw it as an activity that would work for the group.
“It’s so much more feasible to be able to train for Hyrox than it is a marathon,” he points out. “If you’re trying for a marathon, you need to be able to go and train for sometimes two and three hours a day. People just don’t have that time.” With Hyrox it’s 40 minutes or an hour, three or four times a week.
You don’t get bored. The body is kind of focusing on the next thing, so for me that’s why it’s very clever. I call it ‘sneaky fitness’ because everything moves so quickly and it’s a short amount of everything in the training
— Emma Beamish
One downside he sees is people becoming so obsessed with Hyrox that the way they train for events is not ideal. “They are just doing Hyrox sessions every day for all of their training, and that’s not optimal,” Doyle says. “They should really be focused on training the systems and the areas of fitness that help you get better at the things in Hyrox.
“If you’re doing your running and weight training, one to two Hyrox-specific classes a week is going to be enough to get you to a place where you’re going to be able to compete properly.”
Doyle believes Hyrox could become a victim of its own success, unless the number and capacity of events can be increased to meet demand. “The only thing I can see putting people off is that they’re not going to bother training for an event if they’re not even guaranteed that they can get a ticket.”
Former Irish international cricketer Emma Beamish (42) tried and failed to get tickets for Glasgow and Cardiff earlier this year, but is happily heading to Paris this Easter weekend for her second Hyrox event, in the majestic surroundings of the newly restored Grand Palais. The all-round athletic challenge is what attracted her.
“The training programmes are very clever; they’re broken up, they keep you interested.” Involving both running and “all the big compound movements”, she says, “as somebody who has had a lot of injuries, it means that you’re strengthening your body all over, and not just in one particular area”.
Beamish, a secondary-school teacher in Dublin, “hates running”, so is glad to have to do only 1km at a time. “You don’t get bored. The body is kind of focusing on the next thing, so for me that’s why it’s very clever,” she says. “I call it ‘sneaky fitness’ because everything moves so quickly and it’s a short amount of everything in the training.”
Beginners, she suggests, should avoid her mistake of entering the singles at her first event, in Dublin last November. “I nearly cried,” she says, of the concluding wall balls exercise. In Paris, she will be racing with a friend in the pairs.
“It’s such a mental game to keep going by yourself. The doubles is fantastic. It’s so much easier, it’s a giggle.”
However, she is planning to compete in Dublin on her own again this November but vows to be more focused in preparing.
“I’m having great fun and I look forward to it,” she says of Hyrox training. “There’s nothing else that would get me up at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning.”
