![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031352\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8fcf3e2c-4c79-4ebe-988d-8a38d19cab7d.jpg\")
One Hyrox addict tells me she only dates men stronger than herTim Jobling for The Times Magazine<\/p>\nHyrox is a global indoor fitness competition \u2014 a CrossFit-style assault course \u2014 and part of a boom drawing Gen Z from the club to the gym. Originating in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, Hyrox soon claimed to be the fastest-growing fitness sport in the world, and its largest mass participation fitness race.<\/p>\n
Hyrox training clubs proliferate in gyms across British cities \u2014 though are concentrated in the South East \u2014 and abroad, with more than 80 races around the world in 2025. This month sees competitions in Wuhan, Bologna, Sao Paolo and more, and an anticipated 1.3 million will take part this year. Combining eight workout stations, with 8 x 1km runs between them, the brutal, nonstop circuit tests both strength and endurance under fatigue.<\/p>\n
On the difficulty scale, it\u2019s deemed to be harder than a half-marathon. Unlike a half-marathon, however, you don\u2019t actually go anywhere. The name is a combination of \u201chybrid\u201d and \u201crock star\u201d, because people who do it are hybrid athletes and also rock stars. And it is, apparently, compulsory to document the entire thing on social media.<\/p>\n
One Hyrox addict tells me she only dates men stronger than herTim Jobling for The Times Magazine<\/p>\n
At 28, I find Hyrox annoying and the cult-like devotion it inspires among so many of my peers disappointing. My own weekly salvation is a pub chess club in east London. But over the past two years, something has shifted: 3st of new fat has arrived from somewhere. So I bought an outrageously expensive gym membership<\/a> (\u00a3129 a month). And now, for reasons I don\u2019t entirely understand, I\u2019ve decided to sign up for a Hyrox competition in London, to infiltrate the zeitgeist, and maybe get absolutely shredded along the way.<\/p>\n Week one<\/p>\n My Hyrox journey begins, as everything does now, with ChatGPT<\/a>. The bespoke training plan is full of words I don\u2019t understand, but I can\u2019t face asking a trainer to decode it.<\/p>\n I start my programme the morning after a night at the pub. On the rowing machine \u2014 a key part of the Hyrox circuit \u2014 I watch my gut compress. Then I run at an incline, which feels awful. On the sled push and pull, my instinct is to haul with my arms, but a busybody gymgoer warns this will \u201cblow your back out early in a race\u201d.<\/p>\n There\u2019s the SkiErg, simulating a sport I\u2019ve never attempted. Weighted lunges, carrying a sandbag on my shoulders. A farmer\u2019s carry \u2014 hauling heavy kettlebells for 200 metres. Rowing, burpees and \u201cwall balls\u201d, which involve squatting and throwing a medicine ball at a wall 100 times. Each station is broken up by that 1km run. It\u2019s a ridiculous, frantic circuit of suffering.<\/p>\n When I tell people about my Hyrox challenge, everyone asks the same thing \u2014 what if I enjoy it? I find this offensive. I have, after all, read Middlemarch. On my day off, I play about 50 games of online chess, drink a bottle of wine and watch lots of football.<\/p>\n Week two<\/p>\n My first Hyrox class happens at my local gym after work. A sylph-like trainer stands atop the stairs and directs us through stretches. We squat in a circle. It all feels so intimate. I don\u2019t like the moaning. I don\u2019t like looking people in the eye as we see how low we can go.<\/p>\n We start pushing sleds. We throw medicine balls at the wall. People shout things like, \u201cKeep pushing,\u201d and, \u201cLast minute, go, go, go.\u201d I wonder if I should shout something like, \u201cHas it come to this?\u201d<\/p>\n I have a very Protestant approach to exercise: solitary, joyless, vaguely penitential. No witnesses and definitely no absolution. Headphones in, The Rest Is History<\/a> on. Hyrox, by contrast, is pure Catholicism \u2014 all pomp, ceremony and collective suffering.<\/p>\n Week three<\/p>\n If an hour on the treadmill sounds bad, the sauna after a Hyrox session is worse. People talk loudly about day trading. I overhear lists of things they won\u2019t eat. I listen to months-long fitness plans, debates about mixed martial arts styles and the best bars in Dubai<\/a>. I listen to men make promises to each other.<\/p>\n The thread running through all of it is an obsession with self-optimisation. My generation has come of age in a culture that treats the self as a commodity to be upgraded and refined. Sleep, especially, has become an arena for optimisation. \u201cBoost REM.\u201d \u201cWake up recharged.\u201d I see an advert for mouth tape promising to stop your \u201csoul operating on low-battery mode\u201d.<\/p>\n Week four<\/p>\n Disaster strikes. I have slipped a disc in my back. Surely I\u2019m about 20 years too young for a slipped disc. This doesn\u2019t bode well, for Hyrox or the rest of my life. The worst thing is, it wasn\u2019t anything to do with exercising. I sat on a bar stool wrongly.<\/p>\n I spend two weeks over Christmas horizontal, dosing myself with anti-inflammatories and co-codamol, contending with total structural failure. Basic tasks are beyond me. I have three months to get off the sofa and back on the horse.<\/p>\n Week five<\/p>\n It\u2019s mid-January and I\u2019m hunched and hobbling around a physio\u2019s office. I tell him I\u2019ve got a Hyrox coming up and he grimaces while knocking tiny needles into my skin.<\/p>\n Over the next week I do my little exercises on hard floors. I do the child\u2019s pose and then something called the cat cow. I try to do a weightless hip thrust, but my back buckles. In two months\u2019 time I am supposed to be pulling and pushing a weighted sled for 50 metres. At the moment, I can\u2019t even sneeze.<\/p>\n I\u2019m thoroughly disappointed. I\u2019d rather hoped I could turn up undertrained and still be better than the people who\u2019ve made it their entire personality.<\/p>\n Week seven<\/p>\n We\u2019re back, baby. I am training again, heavier than ever. I feel this weight most acutely running, when time metastasises like a cruel trick. Minutes feel like oceans.<\/p>\n The clearest evidence of my new lifestyle isn\u2019t physical or spiritual or anaerobic, but algorithmic. Gone are AI cats working at McDonald\u2019s, Arsenal<\/a> goals, tattoos and Sydney Sweeney. Now topless men scream tips at me about \u201cmaximising my output\u201d \u2014 what I\u2019m doing wrong and how to fix it \u2014 while promising unprecedented physical and cerebral gains. I watch videos called Get Ready with Me. I watch people talk about T-shirts. I am filled with profound sadness.<\/p>\n Week nine<\/p>\n Everyone says the best thing about Hyrox is the community, so it\u2019s probably about time I go to a Sunday meet-up. I am on my way to a Hyrox class in Battersea called Sunday Service, run by a collective called the Weekend Project. The club defines itself as a \u201cmovement and lifestyle community\u201d that \u201caims to curate a global space for like-minded connection through goods and IRL experiences\u201d. I translate that as meaning, do you want to make friends while running and jumping? Also, you can buy merchandise.<\/p>\n My companions today are Sophie and Dayna, two jocular Kiwi sisters. Sophie is a Hyrox \u201cbeast\u201d and Dayna knows that her main role is to take pictures for Sophie\u2019s Instagram. As I\u2019m waiting for them outside the converted railway arches, a man stamps my wrist with the words \u201cStay connected\u201d and tells me about the importance of community. The phrase \u201cNothing great is imagined alone\u201d is plastered across their social media channels.<\/p>\n We\u2019re about to start and Dayna and Sophie have the giggles. \u201cWho brought Unc?\u201d Sophie says. I\u2019m 28, but sure.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll spare you the details of the next hour. Basically, it was shit. When the session ends everyone breaks out into one, collective cheer. People I haven\u2019t met come and pat me on my sweaty back. All the women in the class are given roses to mark International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a ritual to go for coffee after. People chat about fitness and social media numbers in the cold. They tell me how their social circles revolve around these kinds of clubs. Sophie tells me she would only date someone who\u2019s stronger than her.<\/p>\n Week twelve<\/p>\n I\u2019m on my way to have my body \u201ctested by science\u201d. It\u2019s deep inside a Gymbox: neon panels, thudding bass. Two Swiss people discuss lactate thresholds and cortisol spikes. All I hear is, \u201cContinue until failure.\u201d<\/p>\n I pass rows of side rooms full of classes. An effusive ultramarathon runner tells me there are \u201cno wrong answers\u201d. I suspect vomiting on the treadmill after ten seconds would constitute a wrong answer, but I nod.<\/p>\n At the end, after running until failure and getting my ears pricked, the results are conclusive: I produce too much lactate too early \u2014 in other words, I\u2019m still unfit.<\/p>\n Which is weird, because I do feel fitter. Six months ago, I could barely run for 15 minutes without collapsing. I\u2019ve lost about 13lb and my sleep is better. So, to be told I\u2019m subpar is disheartening, because it feels like I have committed a huge amount of time to exercising over the last two months. Admittedly, I haven\u2019t cut out drinking or rubbish food and my training probably hasn\u2019t been intense enough, but I feel like I should be in better shape.<\/p>\n Race day<\/p>\n Inside Olympia in London, it\u2019s a festival. Rivers of lightly clad people pulse through makeshift walkways. An MC shouts. Pyrotechnics flare. There\u2019s a Puma shop, a temporary tattoo parlour and a nail salon. I feel a bit sick.<\/p>\n The first runs and the SkiErg feel manageable, but this is where that ends, because it\u2019s time to push sled. Short, choppy steps. Sweat dripping onto the sled like blood from a burst vein. A wave of nausea. On the track I realise I\u2019m more exhausted than I\u2019ve ever been in my life \u2014 and I\u2019m still near the start. My knees burn on the artificial grass. My shoulders and back jolt with every rep.<\/p>\n Run, row, run, then the farmer\u2019s carry. A few strides into the sandbag lunges and everything goes weird. I can\u2019t lift my head; the 20kg bag grinds into my neck. My legs are gone. I drop the bag and incur a 15-second penalty. Drop it again and I\u2019m disqualified, which feels unnecessarily draconian when you think about the stakes. I fold into the barrier, hyperventilating, trying not to be sick.<\/p>\n The next run is unreal. My legs don\u2019t work. It takes ten minutes to drag myself through the final kilometre. Then, 100 wall balls. I run into the pen, gallows-esque with its platform and looming frames, and have no idea how I\u2019m going to finish. Friends in the crowd call my name. I wish they would leave. This is a physical and spiritual brutalisation.<\/p>\n Then everything changes. I can feel my consciousness as a physical thing. It\u2019s all-out tunnel vision. I am the sum of my pain. I keep failing reps for not squatting low enough so the judge puts a box beneath me. At this point, you enter a strange, parasocial relationship with the judge. You are at your most fragile and someone you don\u2019t know watches you with a clipboard, ready to make it worse. I look at mine and say with my eyes I can\u2019t and she says with her words you can. I ask her for water, and she says that there is no water. But ultimately, she is right and I can. And I did.<\/p>\n At the finish line there\u2019s no relief. I collapse into a chair and let my body feel foreign. My leg spasms. I can\u2019t hear out of one ear. I see my friend smiling, then not smiling when he realises that I\u2019m ruined. Sophie \u2014 who started 30 minutes after me and finished 30 minutes before \u2014 says something kind, but it barely registers. Someone walks past in a T-shirt: \u201cThis life is not for everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n People ask if I feel good. I don\u2019t. I did something difficult and horrible in front of a lot of people and found it unbearable. I was bad at it. I feel flat. I have a few pints and go home. I have no appetite and I don\u2019t sleep. It all feels like a hallucination.<\/p>\n A few days later, I tell Sophie how I ignored medical advice to cancel the event because I really wanted to write this. She says I sound like a true hybrid rock star. <\/p>\n Grooming: Lucie Pemberton using Erborian. Pink top, purple shorts and trainers, hyrox.com<\/a>. Blue vest and black shorts, fabletics.co.uk<\/a>. Socks, sockshop.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hyrox is a global indoor fitness competition \u2014 a CrossFit-style assault course \u2014 and part of a boom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[49,48,407,84],"class_list":["post-593423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031405\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4292d9dc-ccec-4130-8ba6-4aedfc18dfc4.jpg\")
Preparing for \u201cwall balls\u201d, which involve squatting and throwing a medicine ball at a wall 100 timestim jobling for the times magazine<\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031524\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4c75a0b1-ec2b-4817-a4c3-d0c66714e0f4.jpg\")
I have a very Protestant approach to exercise: solitary, joyless, vaguely penitentialtim jobling for the times magazine<\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031005\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ab75cdf0-4bcc-4ef9-a6fe-b4d4ad67b91f.jpg\")
Disaster strikes: I have slipped a disc in my backtim jobling for the times magazine<\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031766\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/83d33277-4767-4ca4-819d-121a05a7c7d6.jpg\")
Dawtrey doing weighted lunges during his Hyrox race at London OlympiaHYROX<\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031818\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/abce7c27-05aa-4018-b7e0-95418bb0c3bf.jpg\")
The wall balls challengeHYROX<\/p>\n![\"NINTCHDBPICT001071031857\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d604ec53-0f5b-40b7-963e-22e2f289ebb0.jpg\")
Dawtrey at the finishing lineHYROX<\/p>\n