A competition described as a “global fitness race” is building up a mass following among UK gym-goers.
Hyrox, which combines running with a full-body workout, is the latest fitness craze among those who want to “go one better” than a Parkrun but have had enough of “hardcore obstacle courses” like Tough Mudder, said health writer Peta Bee in The Times. And the hype about the exercise challenge is “huge”, in part because the target market isn’t triathlon or marathon types, but rather “regular gym-goers seeking an outlet for a previously untapped competitive streak”.
What is Hyrox?
Launched in 2017 by German former athlete Christin Tötzke, Hyrox has gained a global following, said the BBC, with a “1,000% increase in participation in the past five years”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week’s Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The premise of the race is simple. Participants run 1km and then complete a functional fitness exercise. “Rinse and repeat eight times, and you have yourself a Hyrox race,” said GQ.
The exercises comprise a 1km sprint on a SkiErg, a full-body cardio machine; a 50m weighted sled push; a 50m sledge pull; 80m of burpee broad jumps; 1,000m of rowing; a 200m farmer’s carry (using a kettlebell); 100m of sandbag lunges; and 100 wall ball throws.
There are no qualification entry requirements or finishing time restrictions. And each Hyrox race consists of waves of starters every 10 minutes throughout the day, so “there’s no fear of finishing in ‘last’ place”, said GQ. It is an “own-pace, own-race event” where amateurs and pros take part side by side.
More than 175,000 people are due to take part in 65 Hyrox races this year, some of which are in major arenas, such as Birmingham’s NEC and London ExCel. Entries to a race in May at London Olympia “sold out months ago”, said Bee in The Times, with some 12,500 people expected to take part.
Hyrox founder Tötzke has even bigger ambitions for the competition, telling The Times that he wanted to see it “become the gym-goer’s equivalent of the London Marathon for runners”.
Why is it so popular?
The hashtag ‘#hyroxlondon’ has garnered “millions of views on TikTok and tens of thousands of Instagram posts”, said the BBC. Along with social media, another key reason why Hyrox is popular is that people don’t have to compete alone; many are in pairs or teams of four.
It is also within the realms of possibility for most regular gym-goers. The functional stations “aren’t highly technical and don’t require brute strength but are pitched so that even people with little circuit training experience can have a stab at them”, said Bee.
The race has become particularly popular with 35- to 39-year-olds, with the average participant at the latest London Hyrox race aged 37. But there is no upper age limit to participate – Hyrox said its oldest finisher was 74 “and still going strong”.
Hyrox classes are also increasing in popularity as more gym-goers become interested in participating in the races, as well as the opportunity the classes offer to train in groups while using a range of equipment.
The Gym Group first offered Hyrox classes in March last year at one of its venues and has since expanded into 14 gyms across London. One of the chain’s trainers, Jenni Tardiff, told the BBC that Hyrox classes “really quickly became the most popular class in the gym”.
“It started off with members who maybe knew about Hyrox and then it just exploded into everybody,” she said.
