This is About Hyrox but Not About Hyrox

Lessons Learned From Hyrox Pro in ATL

This weekend, a group from Elysium participated in Hyrox in Atlanta. It was a first for all of us and it was awesome. As always, it’s at the top of my list of things I enjoy to see our own community from Elysium choose to challenge themselves, celebrate each other, and express fitness through these kinds of experiences and adventures.

Beyond that, I’m always looking for what I can learn from the thing i’m doing. While doing the thing is enough, it’s never just about the thing itself.

Bryce and I raced in the Hyrox Pro Doubles division. This is the division that, if you win, qualifies you for the World Championship race. The kind of time that would result in qualification wasn’t the goal, but when we did the Hyrox Assessment, our score suggested the Pro Division was where we belonged.

I’m glad we did, it was the exact right challenge both for preparation and performance.

When we tested the full Hyrox event at home, we completed it in just under 58 minutes. That was every run and every station, but without transitions and without the “Rox Zone”, which at the time, we knew existed but didn’t take the time to actually understand what it was.

Because we got sub 60:00 in testing, we assumed that 60 minutes was the target for race day as well.

That’s not how it shook out. Our finish time was just over 1 hour and 6 minutes, which to be clear, we’re both plenty happy with it and helps us better understand how impressive it is for people to do this thing in 50-55 minutes.

So below are some findings and learnings, personally, generally, and regarding Hyrox specific performance.

Personal Stuff Learned in Bullet Point Format

• The finish time was only a target in order to drive effort, not to determine the value of the experience. If motivation is driven by the podium, the leaderboard, or beating other people on the track, it’s dirty fuel and not the kind I’m willing to fill myself with any longer when it comes to athletic pursuits.

• Winning is good, it’s cool, it’s euphoric even. It’s also fickle and, in my opinion, isn’t the only valuable or even most valuable thing for 99.9% of people in competitions to measure.

• “If you’re not first, your last” is a stupid, toxic, and objectively inaccurate statement that ruins experiences like this for so many people, or worse, keeps even more people from participating in the first place.

  • *This topic fires me up, so i’ll save more thoughts for an article specifically on this mentality.

    

• It’s not only about fun. It should be enjoyable, but not every moment of it should be fun. The feeling most people experience after completing something like this is satisfaction — satisfaction comes ONLY after the completion of something difficult. So, while having fun can and should be a component of your experience, it should be met with moments that challenge you to break through mental and physical barriers that you’ve never encountered before. This is how you find satisfaction and growth from the experience, not just fun that fades or difficulty that frustrates.

• Having something to prepare for changes way more than you think. Having the Hyrox on the calendar for the last 5+ months has dialed in my discipline and forced my focus on elements of athleticism and training that i’ve neglected. As rewarding and enjoyable as the experience was, the sessions spent in preparation is something I both enjoyed and appreciate even more.

• Find your respectful rival. I don’t know that this is the term i’d land on, but it’s a working title for someone who’s best makes you better. Teams and partners can be toxic pits of comparison and ego. This again is dirty fuel to use in the process of growth and performance. Preparing for and completing the Hyrox with Bryce was the exact opposite. We’re neck and neck on a handful of performance metrics, Bryce is more capable than I am at many, and the number of things i’m better at than he is are few. If this wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t get better. More importantly, if we both weren’t pursuing these things for the same and larger reasons, it also wouldn’t be a growth experience.

  • A respectful rival is the person whose own pursuits help you close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

    • They challenge you without comparison.

    • They compete with you without contempt.

    • They want to win — but they want to beat your best, not your worst.

    • They drive you to be better, and don’t root for your failure.

    • Their presence brings out your potential, not your insecurity.

• Shoutout to Bryce & Logan for consistently being respectful rivals in my process for years now.

  

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General Thoughts

• Hyrox is fun. They’ve made clear decisions regarding their mission and priorities and those larger decisions dictate the little ones. Because they value inclusivity, both the race elements and the atmosphere are welcoming. The environment is charged with energy that everyone can feel and feed off of.

• They crush logistics. For the most part, the event was extremely smooth, organized, and highlighted the athlete experience. The fact that they pulled this off with 8,000 participants was impressive. The moments in the Red Bull Tunnel prior to the start were dialed in and really cool.

• The community is strong. As someone who’s experienced the strength and soul of the CrossFit community for many years, I was curious about how the Hyrox community would fare in comparison. It did not disappoint and here’s the main reason why: I didn’t feel like I was a part of the “Hyrox Community”, I felt like I was a part of a group of 8,000 other people who, in their own ways, valued health, performance, longevity, challenges, adventures, and growth. To put it simply, it didn’t feel like a bunch of “Hyroxers”, it felt like a bunch of humans doing Hyrox. There was plenty of kindness, encouragement, affirmation, and healthy conversation if you’d make yourself available to it.

• It should be celebrated. Anyone who chooses to participate should be celebrated for their efforts, not criticized for choosing to express their fitness in this way versus a way that others deem “more elite”, “more effective”, or “more well-rounded.” If our goal is a better, healthier, happier world and to use fitness as a tool to get there — this is checking that box. Put down the pitch forks and pick up the hand-written, glitter covered, big-head poster board signs that say, “I’m proud of you for doing something…anything…that’s challenging”

• It’s hard. For those that feel like Hyrox is easy, especially if you are a “CrossFitter”, good luck. That attitude will likely be your undoing and the barrier to your enjoyment of the experience. Simple doesn’t mean easy, it often means more effective and even more intensity.

• Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr is the epitome of an athlete. In case you’re not aware, she (the 7x CrossFit Games champion) and her partner James Newbury (who shouldn’t just be dismissed as “Tia’s partner” considering his extremely impressive performance levels in the many domains he’s competed in as well) won the Mixed Pro Doubles division with a time under 54 minutes. To speak to the above point, this is not just because Tia is a dominant CrossFit athlete, it’s because she’s an athlete in general. She didn’t think to herself, “I’ve won the CrossFit Games, so I can easily win Hyrox.” From the outside looking in, it looks much more like her approach was, “The same competitive maturity that made me an Olympian and that made me the most dominant CrossFit Games competitor of all time, will also make me dominant in this arena.” She prepared like a professional and executed like a professional. Most of all, it seems like she’s really enjoying it and that’s awesome.

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Performance Learnings

Alright, on to the bullet list of things that could be helpful if you’re planning to do your own Hyrox. These are not complaints or negative recognitions, they’re just things that could be useful to be aware of in your preparation.

1. Run your own race.

   1. This is the thing i’m most proud of. We knew what our threshold pace was (based on my threshold, not Bryce’s as his 5k Threshold pace is almost :30/mi faster than mine) and for the most part, we held that pace.

   2. Don’t get sucked in to chasing people down or trying to keep up.

   3. This race is about self-control as much as it is anything else.

2. You’re not only running 8k.

   1. The Rox Zone is a major part of the race. I thought the Rox Zone was the time spent from the moment you entered the station of work until you left the station of work. For example, the time it spent you walking from the entry to the rower and then again from the rower to the exit point of the station. This isn’t the case.

      1. Here’s my rough estimate on the actual distance you’re covering.

         • Runs: 8,000m (first one is shorter so not quite 8k total)

         • Roxzone transitions: 320–480m

         • In-station movement: 480m

         • Total: 8,400–8,960 meters

         

3. The sleds don’t move as easily as I expected.

   1. We tested the sled movements with Rogue Echo sleds on a thin turf surface. On race day, the sleds didn’t move as easily or smoothly on the carpet-like surface used by Hyrox.

   2. The ropes for the pull also have a bit more give in them than the ones we were used to, it was even more important to keep maximum tension on the rope by pulling as you step back.

4. The lunge surface is hard.

   1. Nothing to say here specifically besides the fact that you should expect to feel like you’re lunging directly on concrete.

5. The wall ball is different.

   1. I’m pretty good at wall balls. I’ve done the workout “Karen” (150 wall balls for time) unbroken a couple of times in my life and can do pretty large sets without immense fatigue.

   2. With that said, at the end of the entire race they we’re uniquely challenging — so just prepare accordingly.

   3. More specifically, the medball was really slippery. I’m not sure if this is because of the brand and material of the mebdball or because it was covered in the sweat of thousands of other racers who’d used it before me (nice). Either way, I kept having to reset my grip on the ball and consistently found my hands slipping to the top of the ball as I caught it.

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Major Levers

Because we’ll do this again and look to improve our time, here are the two things i’ll focus on as the major levers to shave time off:

1. Continue to improve threshold run pace. A 5k is my preferred way to test this. Right now my 5k threshold pace is around 6:45-6:50. This allows me to run the Hyrox 1Ks in around 4:20-4:40 without blowing up. To get those splits closer to 4:00, i’ll continue to improve my general threshold pace for running.

2. Do the full Hyrox with full transitions. We’ll practice the full thing and intentionally design it to include station transitions and Rox Zones.

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If you’ve read this far, i’m impressed and we should likely hang out because we have lots of things in common haha.

I hope this helps offer you some encouragement to chase something challenging AND enjoy it as you do.

-JP