HYROX
HYROX is a fitness race. You run 1 km, you do a workout station, and you repeat that eight times against the clock. The course is the same in every city, so a time set in Birmingham means exactly the same thing as a time set in Hong Kong. That one idea is why a sport that barely existed a few years ago now fills arenas every weekend.
The format
Eight runs of 1 km, each followed by a station, always in the same order:
1,000 m SkiErg
50 m sled push
50 m sled pull
80 m burpee broad jumps
1,000 m row
200 m farmers carry
100 m sandbag lunges
Wall balls to finish
Weights and reps scale with your division. Open is where most people start. Pro adds heavier sleds, sandbags and wall balls. Doubles lets two of you share the stations while running every kilometre together, and Relay splits the course between a team of four. Breaking the hour is the benchmark serious amateurs chase; a first-timer in Open is usually well over 90 minutes, and that's
Why everyone's doing it
It's trainable in any gym. There's no technical skill to learn, no swim, no bike: if you can run and you can push a sled, you can race. Every result is comparable, so you get a number you can chase for the rest of the season. And it's social in a way most endurance sport isn't. Doubles and Relay mean you can race with your partner, your mates or your run club, and the hall is loud from the first wave to the last.
There's also a season to follow. Events run across the UK and worldwide, with age-group placings that qualify you for the World Championships. That's how two of our athletes earned their ticket to Hong Kong in October.
Where the race is actually decided
Not on the stations. On the runs after
Every station leaves something behind: heavy legs after the sled push, a spiked heart rate after the burpee broad jumps, shaking arms after the farmers carry. The next kilometre is run on that damage, and it's where times blow up. The athletes who finish strong are the ones who can settle their breathing in the first 200 m of each run and get back to a rhythm before the next station.
Ask our athletes which stations wreck their breathing and you get the same two answers: the sled push and the burpee broad jumps. The whole hall is mouth-breathing at that point. Getting air through the nose again, even for part of the run, is what brings the heart rate down. It's the reason you'll see NEON nasal strips on so many faces at the start line.
How to get started
Enter a race 12 to 16 weeks out. A date on the calendar changes how you train.
Train the runs and the stations together. Running 1 km straight off a sled push is a different skill to running 1 km fresh, and it's the one that matters.
Pick Doubles for your first one. You'll race harder with someone beside you and you'll enjoy it more.
Learn to breathe before you learn to suffer. Five minutes a day on the diaphragm pays back on every run of the race.
Team NEON at HYROX
Team NEON raced Birmingham in October and came home with a World Championship qualification, a Women's Relay win and PBs across the board. Read what Team NEON did at HYROX Birmingham for the full story, meet our athletes, and if you're racing this season, tag us. We'll be watching.
