Hyrox training, from someone who races Pro

Hyrox is 8km of running broken into eight 1km segments, with a workout station between each: SkiErg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carry, sandbag lunges, and 100 wall balls to finish. Add the transitions, known as the RoxZone, and you're moving for 60 to 100+ minutes with nowhere to hide.

On paper it's a fitness test. In practice it's one very specific skill: running on legs that have just been loaded, over and over. That's why finish times surprise people in both directions: fast runners bleed whole minutes on the sleds, and strong gym athletes watch their heart rate refuse to come down after station three. The race lives in the gap between those two athletes.

• The first two runs. Adrenaline sets a pace your cardio can't pay for, and the debt lands at the sled push. Most people's race is decided in the first fifteen minutes. Pacing discipline is trained, not decided on the day.
• Treating it like a fitness class. Random hard circuits build tolerance for random hard circuits. Hyrox rewards knowing precisely what effort you can hold at each station and still run afterwards.
• Training the pieces separately. Running fresh and lifting fresh never prepares you for compromised running. If your plan never sends you into a run straight off a sled or a set of wall balls, race day is the first day you'll meet the actual sport.
• Ignoring the wall balls. A hundred of them, at the end, with penalties for missed reps. They're everyone's hardest station and they respond brilliantly to specific preparation.

My preparation stands on the four pillars every serious Hyrox coach recognises, weighted by what your numbers say you need:

• Aerobic base. Most of your weekly running easy, in zone 2. The race is aerobic no matter how spicy the stations feel. Your cardio is what lets your heart rate settle between efforts.
• A strength floor. Compound lifting plus race-specific strength work on the sleds, carries and lunges, built until race weights feel comfortably below your capacity. Strong athletes don't redline on the sled; that's the whole point.
• Compromised running. Deliberate station-into-run pairings at race effort, progressed week by week, until running on loaded legs is boring. This is the skill the race actually tests.
• Simulation. Race rehearsals at controlled effort to lock in pacing, transitions and fuelling before any of it matters.

This is the exact preparation behind my own sub-70 finish in my first Pro-division Hyrox, built on the hybrid base I've been refining for years: strength, running and injury-prevention work in one programme, so you arrive at race week durable instead of patched together.

1:1 coaching is the full version: your race date, your current cardio and strength, a block built backwards from the start line with weekly check-ins. If you want the structure without the coach, the Hybrid Athlete programme in the app builds exactly the strength-plus-cardio base that Hyrox is scored on, with the first 7 days free. A dedicated Hyrox programme is in the works, and programme members will hear about it first.