Hyrox vs CrossFit: Which one should you choose?

In 2023 more than 100,000 people took part in a Hyrox race in 17 different countries, with hundreds of thousands more doing the formulaic workout in their local gyms as a way to get in shape.

Beginning in Germany in 2017, Hyrox is fast becoming a global phenomenon, combining short runs with the kind of fitness movements you find in many standard gym workouts. Walk down the road or have a jog around the park and you’re guaranteed to see at least one person with a black Hyrox-branded vest or baseball cap.

Of course, it’s not the oldest fitness race on the block as CrossFit competitions have been taking place since the 2000s. Search Amazon Prime or Apple TV for documentaries like The Fittest and you’ll see just how seriously it’s taken, with prize money of more than £300,000 on offer to the male and female winners of the Crossfit Games – the sport’s annual competition to find “the fittest man and woman on earth”.

What’s more, the CrossFit Games YouTube channel has 1 million subscribers. Wherever you live in the UK, you’re likely to be within driving distance of a CrossFit gym and a loyal community of WOD-ers, with the name WOD standing for Workout of the Day in the CrossFit world.

Whether you’re bored of going to the gym by yourself, want to incorporate some strength training alongside your running workouts or want to see what your body is capable of, both CrossFit and Hyrox promise to help you get fitter, faster and stronger. Read on to see how they compare.

open image in gallery

Hyrox is a functional fitness workout designed for everybody. Wherever you are in the world, the format is the same. A race involves eight 1k runs interspersed with eight different functional fitness movements. These are designed to be straightforward, natural, and do not require any specific skills, such as Olympic weightlifting or handstand walking that you might find at CrossFit.

The type of exercises you’ll do during Hyrox are sandbag lunges, burpee broad jumps, rowing and kettlebell carrying, all of which are fairly safe to perform and easily done by the average gym-goer so people can compete straight away, without needing to spend hours practising techniques.

“We wanted to create a competition that is accessible and replicates exactly what people were already doing in the gym,” says Hyrox co-founder Christian Toetzke who co-founded the fitness movement with hockey player Moritz Furste.

To make their events suitable for everybody, Hyrox provides four different race divisions to create an inclusive competition for all fitness levels. First up is open, a standard Hyrox race, which is challenging but accessible to most gym-goers. Doubles is where you work as a pair and both complete the 1km running portions but split up the functional fitness exercises, while in the relay four people complete two 1km runs and two fitness stations each. Finally, there’s an individual pro race for more experienced athletes with heavier weights. A questionnaire on the website can help you determine your Hyrox fitness level.

Hyrox UK master trainer and Represent 247 athlete Jake Dearden says: “The atmosphere at every Hyrox is amazing. There’s a DJ, lots of vendors and the room is laid out in such a way that spectating is very easy, allowing you to watch a competitor from start to finish. This makes the whole day very entertaining, even if you’re not competing.”

While Hyrox and CrossFit are both high-intensity workouts that challenge the whole body, there are some key differences between the two.

“The main differences are the predictability and the skill level required,” says Dearden. “CrossFit requires a lot more skill, so a lot more practice, whereas Hyrox is lower skill and the exercises are more accessible.”

Hyrox also has a set format, with eight exercise stations each split with a 1km run. CrossFit, on the other hand, can include any number of movements including high-skill gymnastic and Olympic weightlifting exercises. Many competitions also keep the workouts secret until the week or even day of the event, so you have to train to be ready for anything.

“Some people love that, some people hate it, but I think the majority of people don’t like surprises because they like to know what they’re training for,” Dearden says, coming down firmly in favour of Hyrox. “Once you do one Hyrox, you just want to beat your time. There are so many things you can improve on, it’s quite addictive.”

Meg Jacoby, Hyrox world champion for 2024, points out a few other key differences: the amount of running and the total time you’re working for, both of which tend to be much higher in Hyrox. As a result, you’re relying on different energy systems.

“Hyrox is far more aerobic than CrossFit,” she says. “You have to have a big aerobic base to really succeed in Hyrox, whereas in CrossFit I’d say the opposite is true. You need far more power, and to train in higher heart rate zones for shorter durations.”

However, rather than take sides, she believes that “the two can complement each other well if you know how to find the right balance”.

open image in gallery

A Hyrox race consists of the following (and is completed in exactly this order):

To practise for this, it’s a good idea to combine running and strength and conditioning movements to develop your capacity and strength and understand how it feels to pair these movements together. Below, you can find an example 60-minute workout supplied by Dearden.

Complete five rounds of:

open image in gallery

A typical CrossFit class changes daily, but at its core it has four elements: a warm-up, strength work, workout of the day (WOD), and cool down. Each WOD consists of a mixture of Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, strength training and conditioning exercises, performed at a high intensity.

The warm-up usually consists of light cardio such as two minutes on the Ski erg, assault bike or rowing machine, followed by mobility drills. For the strength part, you’ll likely do back squats, front squats, bench press, pull-ups, deadlifts, snatches or clean and jerks.

The main part is the WOD, which changes daily, but you can expect to spend roughly 10-30 minutes on this section. The format also changes, but one of the most popular to follow is an AMRAP, which stands for “as many rounds as possible”. For example, one of the best-known CrossFit workouts is called Cindy, and involves completing a circuit of five pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 unweighted squats as many times as you can in 20 minutes.

open image in gallery

If you’re pushing yourself to get faster and fitter, Hyrox is satisfyingly challenging. The fastest time for a woman to complete a Hyrox race is 58 minutes and 58 seconds and the average finishing time is 1.5 hours, making it more of a commitment than your local ParkRun, for example. Pulling and pushing sleds will leave your arms, quads and glutes burning, especially if you’re aiming to do it in a certain amount of time.

In a race, the 100m of walking lunges towards the end of the event are particularly painful on legs that are tired from running. The amount of running needed is another factor that makes Hyrox challenging and you do need to be comfortable covering 8km if you want to take it seriously. If you’re not great at running, you may want to prepare.

CrossFit has a reputation for being brutal, which can scare many people away. There are stories of athletes vomiting after pushing themselves to the limit and being unable to walk properly the following day. However, if you find a good CrossFit gym, the trained coaches will be well-practised in scaling workouts to people’s abilities, even beginners. Air squats could be performed to a more shallow depth, for example, and you could modify push-ups to knee push-ups or step onto boxes rather than jump.

open image in gallery

Once you’ve worked your way up, CrossFit workouts present a serious test of fitness, with expert athletes mastering a variety of gymnastics and Olympic weightlifting skills. But that doesn’t mean you need to do that on day one. CrossFit will show you what you’re capable of right now and then push you a little harder at each workout until you have better technique and can do it faster.

Hyrox is more accessible than CrossFit and has the appeal of knowing what you’re getting yourself into as the races are the same around the world. If you enjoy running, it gives you a chance to work strength training into your fitness plan while still being able to hit the treadmill (or the pavements).

At the top level, CrossFit is harder, as you need to become an expert at hundreds of movements to prepare for the few that come up in a race. But Hyrox does offer progression with the opportunity to compete at a pro level and lift heavier weights once you’ve whittled down your time for a standard race.

The one you should choose all comes down to what you prefer. If you like learning new skills and lifting heavier weights, CrossFit might be your bag, while Hyrox offers a more accessible fitness challenge to those who love running and other more endurance-focussed events.

Or, if you really can’t choose, you could do both like Hyrox world champ Meg Jacoby. But with the two training styles providing an intense and challenging workout, expect both your fitness and weekly food bill to increase.

Both Hyrox and CrossFit training sessions are intense and involve a mixture of strength and endurance. Training for the event will burn calories and, depending on your diet, this can help create a calorie deficit which will cause you to lose weight.

“Hyrox training can certainly be a great tool for weight loss, combining cardio with resistance training leading to a high caloric output,” Dearden says. “When accompanied by a good balanced diet, it is a fantastic form of training to get in shape. However, it is important that you fuel yourself enough when training for a race in order to recover and perform at optimum levels.”

As Hyrox and CrossFit include functional movements and weights, they can also help you build muscle, which can contribute to a more lean or toned look.

The next Hyrox competition in London takes place at ExCel London between 29 November and 1 December. To register for this event and be notified of other London events, sign up for the mailing list on the Hyrox website.

Top level CrossFit competitions have to be qualified for, either through the CrossFit Open (an annual online event which anyone can enter) or separate online qualifier workouts which must be filmed and completed.

However, many gyms hold local team and individual competitions which are open to all. These tend to involve four workouts hosted by the gym throughout the day, with the site also providing food, music and more to keep both athletes and spectators fed and entertained.

Have you not got time to go to a gym? Read our review of the best at-home gym equipment