Is CrossFit Good Training for Hyrox?

My Background Going into Hyrox

Hyrox has been sweeping social media and selling out in big cities. It’s basically a workout that is evolving into a self-styled sport of its own. I was lucky to be invited to take part in Hyrox Miami, alongside 7,000 other athletes tackling the eight 1km runs and eight workout stations that make up the race.

Coming off the back of a variety of fitness challenges this year – including a three-day elite CrossFit competition and a marathon – Hyrox seemed to combine both the functional fitness and running events I’d been training for.

This isn’t a review of the event itself, but rather a reflection on whether my eight years of CrossFit training provided a good foundation for Hyrox.

Strength vs. Running

From my experience, no matter how well I performed on the individual stations (and I was a lot faster than some of the competitors…), the running is so dominant that it’s safe to call Hyrox a runner’s game.

Sure, holding a 1:3o-odd split on the rower and SkiErg may have given me 40 seconds over the running specialists on those stations. But when they’re running 1:30 per kilometre faster than me – over 8km – that quickly adds up to them smoking me by 10 minutes overall.

At its peak, my CrossFit training focused on maximum-effort workouts for anything from 3 to 20 minutes, combining weights and high-skill movements, pushing into maximum lactic acid and heart rate zones. There’s an elephant in the room though: running is a very small component of CrossFit. You might see the occasional mile or 5km run programmed – or even a rare 10km at the CrossFit Games – but mostly running is limited to shuttle runs, or used as active recovery within larger workouts.

With so much time dedicated to learning gymnastics, resting between heavy weightlifting sessions, and spiking the heart rate and recovering, you’re unlikely to spend much time on zone 2 cardio. In CrossFit, you don’t spend hours getting comfortable running – and in Hyrox, it’s all about the running. To be competitive, you need to hold fast running paces comfortably. Even the body shape of the top Hyrox athletes tells you a lot: taller, longer legs, and less muscle mass.

How CrossFit Helps

Now, let’s remove the top-end competitive element. If you’re not aiming to get close to the times turned in by the likes of the top 15 elite Hyrox athletes, then can CrossFit training give you a strong showing in a Hyrox event? Can you finish in a more than respectable time on WODs alone? Absolutely.

In fact, there are a few areas where I believe CrossFit actually gives you an advantage, as well as parts of the race where you can spot a CrossFit athlete a mile away.

Hyrox wall ball reps are a very contentious topic online. To be as fair as possible, I’d estimate around 60% of athletes were hitting proper depth when I made it to the final station of the race, with 40% falling short of parallel. CrossFit builds strong legs and a strong core, and it heavily encourages full-depth squats. Plus, by incorporating less running into your training, you will typically be looser in the hips and lower back, which makes performing those reps easier!

Do I think 40% of athletes were actively cheating? No. But I do think they haven’t been taught how to squat properly, may not have built the muscle necessary to get through all 100 reps and haven’t had the standards drilled into them. This is something you can’t get away from in a good CrossFit box.

Strength and Recovery Benefits

Overall strength and recoverability are the big wins for CrossFit. You spend so much time building upper-body strength, developing high output on machines, and prepping your central nervous system to handle weight daily. The kettlebells, lunges, rower, ski machine, and sled stations were all familiar for me, and no surprise that those were the places where I was able to move fastest. I could also hit those stations and immediately get back to my running pace without needing much recovery, thanks to the short rest periods and continuous work that predominates in the average CrossFit WOD.

But – and it’s a big but – these stations make up a relatively small part of the overall workout compared to the running. So, while it helped, it wasn’t enough to bridge the gap to a rapid time over that finish line. The ability to hold a strong running pace is a necessity for that, I’m afraid.

The Final Verdict

Look, basing your training purely on the demands of your competition is always going to be the optimal way to train. For anything.

The question at hand is a bit like asking if rugby prepares you to be a good football player. The answer is: not really. Sure there’s plenty of carryover, and it will certainly prep you to some degree, but you’re not going to make it to the prem by chasing an egg around.

But if you want your training to prepare you for all types of challenges, to have a healthy, resilient body, to lift well, run fast and live longer, then CrossFit is still, to my mind, the most practical solution.

Are you going to be a threat to the podium at any given Hyrox event? Probably not. But, will it get you across that Hyrox finish line in one piece? Absolutely.

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.