That means, no matter what, if you are competing in the men’s open division you’ll be pushing and pulling 152kg (335 lb) and 103kg (227 lb) on the sled, respectively, carrying two 24kg (53 lb) kettlebells for the farmer’s carry, lunging with a 20kg (44 lb) sandbag, and hitting 100 wall balls with a 6kg (13 lb) medicine ball. As for the distance-based stations, you can expect to cover 1,000m (3,280 ft) each on the SkiErg and rower, and 80m (262 ft) of burpee broad jumps.
“You get to train very specifically, and you’ll quickly understand what you can handle and maybe what needs a little bit of work,” says Tooley, who admits to learning this lesson the hard way during his first Hyrox race. “As somebody who was an endurance athlete, I was so humbled by the sled. It was laughable; I couldn’t freaking move the thing.” So, as you start to incorporate these exercises into your training, keep the official standards in mind, “so that when you get to race day, it’s not a question of, ‘Can I do this?’” he says.
Incorporate ‘compromised running’ into your training
Pushing a 335-pound sled is one thing. Pushing a 335-pound sled after blasting out 1,000 meters on the SkiErg and running two kilometers at race pace is quite something else. That’s why Gornik, Loebig, and Tooley all prescribe what they call “compromised running”—trainer-speak for peppering a training run with workout intervals. Run coaches often employ this technique to get clients used to the feeling of running while fatigued, to prepare them for the later stages of a race. In the case of Hyrox, it’s an even more direct application, allowing you to get a sense of what the various workout stations will feel like after running, and vice-versa.
“People often think about doing each event in isolation, not linking them together,” says Loebig, who runs through a full Hyrox simulation once a week when training for a race. (“It’s not a particularly long race, so your body can handle that stress,” he says, in comparison to simulating, say, a marathon, which would push your body past the point of positive adaptation.) It’s not something he necessarily recommends for all first-timers, but if you’re game, it’s probably the best way to get a handle on your overall readiness.
Another option, which Gornik uses with his Hyrox clients, is a full, albeit scaled-down simulation. “Instead of 1,000 meters, our runs might be 500 meters,” he says. And depending on a person’s fitness level, the weights and reps might be pared back as well. “In a 12-week training block, I’ll have people do that three or four times, just to get an idea of what this whole thing is going to feel like.”
That said, if you don’t have access to all of the equipment needed for a full run-through (which most people surely do not), don’t stress. While incorporating the actual Hyrox exercises into your compromised running workouts can be a helpful gauge, it’s not essential. “Compromised running is about getting used to that feeling of moving from running to a strength-oriented movement, and you can replicate that feeling without replicating the exactness of the race,” says Tooley. “At the end of the day, you can run for four minutes, do a minute of burpees, repeat that for eight rounds, and that will simulate what a Hyrox experience might feel like. If twice per week you do some sort of compromised running in your training, those sessions will do you wonders.”
Don’t get hung up on specific equipment
While it is strongly recommended to get at least a few hands-on training sessions with the specific pieces of equipment you’ll encounter on race day, you could, technically speaking, get by without having them in your regular training. “If you just wanted to finish the race, you could do that without ever having touched a SkiErg or a sled,” says Loebig. Of course, that isn’t to say you don’t need to train for these stations. It just means there are other exercises you can do to achieve similar gains in fitness and strength.