What is Hyrox and why is everyone talking about it?

“Festival vibe” – The Hyrox fitness competition has contenders always coming back for more. Photo / Facebook @hyroxaus
By Nicky Park of RNZ
A new mass sports event designed to test functional fitness and endurance is coming to New Zealand next year, and fitness folks are amping up for it.
There’s space for young and old athletes and non-able bodied competitors – and fans say it’s life-changing. So what the heck is Hyrox?
Mat Lock, the country manager for Hyrox across Australia and New Zealand, says it’s “the fitness competition for everybody”.
“It’s designed to be accessible… the actual race is designed on the current of human movement. So run, push pull, jump, throw. That’s the most raw and pure version of functional fitness you can imagine.
“Hyrox is a blend of functional fitness and endurance. So it’s about 50 percent run and then the other 60 percent is made up of eight workstations.”
Competitors kick off with a 1000m SkiErg. The other stations are a 50m sled push, 50m sled pull, 80m burpee broad jump, 1000m row, 200m farmer’s carry, 100m lunges with sandbag on your back, and finally 75-100 wall balls (throwing a heavy medicine ball at a wall). If that doesn’t sound challenging enough, there’s a one kilometre run between each station.
It’s a staggered start, so a wave of competitors start slaying the SkiErg every 10 minutes. Lock reckons this “perpetual motion” takes the edge off for people who could feel self-conscious or suffer performance anxiety. On average, it takes about 90 minutes to sweat through the full event.
“You’re simply part of the whole thing… even if you’re doing it solo, It’s not like being on a stage with the spotlight on you.”
Hyrox originated in Hamburg, northern Germany, in 2017. Lock says its creator Christian Toetzke recognised that there are millions of people who go to the gym every single day, but don’t have a contest to participate in.
“Now, of course, it’s naturally attracting all sorts of athletes and people from other functional fitness-oriented brands such as CrossFit, but triathletes, runners, cyclists, swimmers, you name it.”
Races in the United Kingdom sell out 20,000 spots in a couple of hours. In the past 12 months, 430,000 people have done the race around the world. There have been 81 races across 26 countries, with more signing up every month.
In 2023 about 5000 people raced in two Hyrox competitions in Australia. This year there have been five races in Australia with more than 40,000 people crossing the finish line, lots of them Kiwis. Lock is confident that the 7400-place first New Zealand race, taking place over the first weekend in February 2025, will sell out.
Lock reckons part of the appeal is the fact it’s held indoors. It’s also deliberately designed to be more spectator-friendly than an event like long-distance triathlon, for example.
“You can get right up close and personal. You can be literally one-metre away from your friends, your family members.
“It’s very much the festival vibe.”
Lock says most competitors are just regular gym bunnies who are looking for a bigger goal to train for than looking good on the beach.
Some choose to slog the whole thing out solo – like Abbas Nazari, the owner of two BFT gyms in Wellington. His first Hyrox was last year in Sydney, where he managed to score third place in the 25 to 29-year-old age group, finishing the open category in 72 minutes.
“I had no idea what I was doing, to be honest, but I did really well and managed to get a podium in my age group and then I was just instantly hooked,” he says.
If that seems a bit too testing, entrants can compete as a double or in a relay with four people, which is “the lowest barrier to entry” – so each person would do a quarter of the race, and two runs.
Lock says a lot of people start by being part of a relay but come back for more the next time.
“They do the relay, they love it, but then go, ‘oh I reckon I could do this’.”
Once participants have nailed the open race they can test themselves in the pro division, which means heavier weights and puts them in the running to qualify for the world championship competitions.
In November 2023, on the back of his honeymoon in Japan, Nazari stopped by the Hong Kong comp, giving the pro level a go and scoring silver with a time of 68 minutes (his least favourite leg is the burpee broadjumps), which qualified him for the world championships in France that year.
Nazari is aiming for sub-60 minutes at the Auckland competition, though he’s already managed to clip his ticket to next year’s world championships in June in Chicago, along with two other members from his gym.
Kath Williams hit an almighty slump when her husband died in an accident on the Manukau Harbour in October 2021.
In amongst the grief, she set up a BFT gym in south Auckland, working long hours to get it finished with the support of family and friends. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, was drinking too much booze and just not looking after herself.
“I had this bad cycle of bad health and grief and I probably felt like I aged 10 years within two years.”
She learned about the Hyrox compeition in Australia and thought it was just the thing – “I needed something major to kick my ass”.
“I needed to be the walking, talking role model to my members and I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do this because not because I think I can but because why, why can’t I?”
She quietly recruited a handful of members to train with her every Sunday for 12 weeks, eventually taking a crew of 11 over to the Sydney comp earlier this year.
“We had the best, the most amazing time. I want to describe it as exhilarating, a sense of accomplishment.
“So now I have purpose.
“You want to vomit [while competing] but it’s being around other people that have gone through the pain like you have. It’s being able to sit around and chat after the race about what you found difficult and what you really do. Yeah, it’s a vibe.”