Hyrox workout and training plan: 12 weeks to race day

If you've just paid the entry fee and are now quietly wondering what a sled pull is, this page is for you: the whole race in one table, a week-by-week plan with real distances, a swap for every station your gym doesn't have, and how to pace the day so the second half isn't a slog.

One thing to hold on to before the numbers: Hyrox says 99% of its racers reach the finish line.¹ The race is built for ordinary people.

What a Hyrox workout is: the race on one screen

You run 1 km, do one station, and repeat that eight times, always in the same order.² The runs are laps of a course inside the venue, and how many laps make up a kilometre depends on the venue.

Hyrox measures everything in metres, at American races too, so that's how the plan is written. If you think in miles: each 1 km run is about 0.6 miles, so the eight runs add up to roughly 5 miles. On a track, 400 m is one lap (a quarter mile) and 800 m is two. A 50 m sled lane is about 55 yards.

Those are the Open weights for the 2026/27 season, from Hyrox's own rulebook.²³ Sled weights include the sled, and both sleds go back and forth along a 12.5 m lane four times. The wall ball target is 2.70 m (8 ft 10 in) for women and 3.00 m (9 ft 10 in) for men. Pro is a heavier division for later; the running is 8 km for everyone.

That last part matters more than the sled weights. Hyrox describes the race as half running.⁴ In a small study of a simulated race, running took about 60% of the time. Three things went with a faster finish: aerobic fitness, how much endurance training people did, and lower body fat. Grip strength and muscle mass didn't show up as predictors.⁵ So this plan is built on running, with the stations added on top.

Can you do this from where you are?

Age is rarely the obstacle: racers must be 16 or older, and the age groups run in five-year bands up to 85 to 89.² Hyrox has its own quick level check,¹ but what decides where you start is how far you can run now and how often you already train.

• You can run 3 miles (5 km) without stopping and you work out once or twice a week. Start week 1 on Monday. Twelve weeks is enough.
• You can't run 3 miles (5 km) yet. Give yourself 6 to 8 weeks of run-walking first, three times a week, alongside two short strength sessions. Weeks 1 and 2: jog 1 minute, walk 2, eight times. Weeks 3 and 4: jog 2, walk 1, eight times. Weeks 5 and 6: jog 5, walk 1, four times. Once you can jog 20 to 25 minutes without stopping, you're ready for week 1, whose easy run is 25 minutes. With the on-ramp it's an 18 to 20 week build, which is fine. Races come round often.
• You're a runner who has never pushed a sled. Your race is in stations 2, 3, 7 and 8. Follow the plan as written, and in weeks 1 to 8 add a second strength session of 30 minutes: squats, lunges and rows.
• You lift but hate running. Running is your race, and skipping it to lift more is how strong people end up walking run 6. Never drop the easy run. If anything, add 10 easy minutes on the bike after your strength session.

These starting points are our coaching judgement, not research. So are the numbers in the plan below: they're built conservatively, for someone doing this for the first time.

This is general guidance for healthy adults. If you have a heart or lung condition, get chest pain or faintness when you exercise, are pregnant, or are coming back from injury or surgery, check with a clinician first, and stop any movement that causes sharp pain rather than effort.

The 12-week plan

Each week has four sessions.

• Easy run. At a pace where you could talk in full sentences. It should feel almost too easy. This is where your running base gets built, and if your heart rate looks high at this pace, here's why that happens. More on finding the pace in zone 2 training explained.
• Intervals. Ten minutes of easy jogging, then the repeats in the table with a walk between each, then five minutes easy. Repeats of 400 m and 800 m are comfortably hard: you could say a few words, not a sentence. From week 9 the 1 km repeats are at your race pace, with 90 seconds' rest between them.
• Strength and stations, about an hour. Warm up, then five lifts for 3 sets of 8 to 12: goblet squat or back squat, Romanian deadlift, split squat, push-ups or a dumbbell press, and a one-arm dumbbell row. Stop every set with two or three good reps left. Then station practice: stations 1 to 4 in odd weeks, 5 to 8 in even weeks. In weeks 9 to 11, drop to 2 sets of each lift so the stations get your energy.
• Run plus station. The session that makes Hyrox feel like Hyrox: running on legs that just did something else.

A week that works for most people: strength and stations on Monday, intervals on Wednesday, the easy run on Friday, run plus station on Saturday. Keep the intervals and the run plus station session apart. Lifting and running in the same week is fine; the interference effect is small for almost everyone.

What week 6 looks like

• Monday, strength and stations. The five lifts, 3 sets each. Then an even week's stations: row 2 × 500 m, farmers carry 2 × 100 m, sandbag lunges 2 × 50 m and wall balls 5 × 20, at race weight if your form holds.
• Wednesday, intervals. Ten minutes easy, 5 × 800 m comfortably hard with a walk between, five minutes easy.
• Friday, easy run. Forty minutes at chatting pace.
• Saturday, run plus station. Three rounds: 1 km then 500 m on the SkiErg, 1 km then 40 m of burpee broad jumps, 1 km then 50 wall balls.

The two tables below give every week's version of each session.

The runs, week by week

What the last column means:

• Weeks 1 to 3 use the rower or SkiErg instead of a fourth run, so your heart and lungs get the work without your shins and knees taking the pounding.
• A round is a 1 km run straight into half of one station's race distance, then 2 or 3 minutes' rest. Change the station each round and finish every session with wall balls, because that's how the race ends.
• First half is runs 1 to 4 with stations 1 to 4 at race distance, in order. Use lighter sleds if race weight stops you moving. Second half is runs 5 to 8 with stations 5 to 8, at race weights.
• Rehearsal is all eight stations in order, with 500 m runs and half of every station, at race weights. Wear your race shoes, and beforehand eat the breakfast you plan to have on race morning: something plain that you know sits well before a long run.

There's no full race run-through: you don't need one to finish, and doing one in the last two weeks mostly means you start the race tired. Some plans include one; if you're itching to, week 9 is the place.

The stations, phase by phase

Rest a minute or two between sets. Carries, lunges and wall balls start at race weight if every rep looks the same; go lighter if they start to wobble. In week 12, use the weeks 1 to 3 column early in the week, and skip the heavy lifting. No sled, SkiErg or wall ball? Every station has a swap under how to train each station.

The lighter weeks, 4 and 8, halve the station sets at the same weights and shorten the runs. They feel like slacking; they're how your body catches up with the hard weeks before (why deloads work). After each one you pick up where you left off, not beyond it. Small steps are the point: a study of new runners suggests that jumps of more than 30% in weekly distance over two weeks may bring more overuse injuries.⁶

Only three days a week?

Keep the easy run and strength and stations every week. The third session alternates:

• Intervals in weeks 1 to 4, 6, 8 and 12
• Run plus station in weeks 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11, so you still get both halves and the rehearsal

You'll be a little less sharp on the runs. You'll still finish.

Missed a week?

Repeat the last week you finished instead of jumping ahead. Missed two or more: go back to the start of that phase. Cramming two weeks into one doesn't win the time back; it just makes the next week harder.

How to train each station

Each station has a standard a judge watches for. Breaking it costs a warning and then 15-second penalties, and at wall balls a rep simply doesn't count.² Train to the standard from week 1 and it's a habit by race day.

1. SkiErg. Your feet stay on the base. Think of it as a hinge, not an arm pull: hips back as the handles come down, arms finish the stroke. No SkiErg: row, or do straight-arm pulldowns on a cable or a long band.

2. Sled push. The whole sled has to cross the 12.5 m line before you turn it. Get low, arms long, and take short, quick steps. No sled: push a curved, non-motorised treadmill if your gym has one, and do heavy split squats and wall sits for leg drive.

3. Sled pull. You stay standing the whole time (no sitting or kneeling) and inside your box at the end of the lane. Sit your hips low, brace your feet, and go hand over hand with your legs doing as much as your arms. No sled: hand-over-hand pulls on a cable rope, plus heavy dumbbell rows.

4. Burpee broad jumps. Your chest touches the floor on every burpee, both feet take off and land together, and your hands go down within 30 cm (a foot) of your front foot. You may step back and step in rather than jump, and use a knee to get up. Do that: it saves a lot of energy over 80 m. No kit needed, just a long floor or a path.

5. Row. You stay seated until the 1,000 m are done. Legs, then body, then arms, and the power comes from the legs pushing. No rower: the SkiErg or a bike.

6. Farmers carry. You can put the kettlebells down to rest, as long as they don't move forward when you do. Shoulders down, quick steps, and know that your grip goes before your legs. No kettlebells: any two heavy dumbbells.

7. Sandbag lunges. The bag stays on both shoulders, your back knee clearly touches the ground on every rep, you stand tall at the top, and you alternate legs with no shuffle steps between. On tired legs the knee touch is the first thing to go, so practise lunges when you're already tired. No sandbag: a backpack loaded with books, worn high on your back.

8. Wall balls. You start each rep standing, squat until your hips are below your knees, and hit the target. If either part misses, it's a no rep. In the simulated-race study, wall balls produced the highest heart rate, lactate and effort of the whole race,⁵ so break them into sets before you need to (10s or 15s with three breaths between) and train them tired, which is what the run plus station sessions are for. No wall ball: a light medicine ball thrown to a mark at target height on a high wall, or dumbbell thrusters.

Get on a real sled before race day. Three or four sessions on one is worth it, because nothing else feels quite like it. Hyrox's own gym finder lists affiliated gyms near you;⁷ ask before you go whether they have a sled you can use.

Racing doubles or relay

Doubles is two people, and it's less of a discount than it sounds. You run every kilometre together, all 8 km of them, and if one of you runs ahead it's a one-minute penalty. Only the station work is split, however you like, usually by taking turns ("you go, I go": one rows 250 m, then you swap). The partner who's resting has to stay on their feet.⁸ So both of you still follow the full running plan, and the stations can be practised in short swaps.

Relay is a team of four, each running two 1 km runs and doing the two stations that follow them.³ If that's you, weeks 1 to 8 of this plan are plenty; spend the rest practising your own two stations hard.

Pacing the race

What time to expect. Hyrox's own figure is about 90 minutes on average.⁴ Published race results put the typical Open finish at around 1 hour 28 minutes for men and 1 hour 36 for women, and a first race at anywhere from 1:30 to 2:00 or a bit more.⁹ Two hours on your first go is a normal, good result.

Turn that into a running pace. Running takes half to 60% of a race, by Hyrox's figure and the study's,⁴⁵ so a 2-hour finish leaves 60 to 72 minutes for the 8 km: 7:30 to 9:00 per km, or about 12 to 14½ minutes a mile. To find your own pace, take your current 5 km pace and add about a minute per km: a 30-minute 5 km (6:00 per km) gives about 7:00 per km, a little quicker than that 2-hour band. That's our rule of thumb for a first race, not a formula, and it's the pace for your 1 km repeats from week 9. If the last repeat falls apart, slow them all by 15 seconds.

Start slower than feels right. Hyrox's own advice is not to start too fast: people run a personal best on the first kilometre and hammer the SkiErg, then pay for it.⁴ Ski steadily, and aim for runs that are all about the same speed.

Expect the middle to bite. In the simulated-race study, run 5, straight after the burpee broad jumps, was the slowest.⁵ Keep something back through stations 4 to 6, let the run after the burpees be a recovery jog if you need it, and save what's left for the wall balls.

Don't give time away. Two rules cost first-timers more than slow running. Count your laps: in most venues a missed lap adds 3 to 7 minutes. And use the right arches in the Roxzone, the transition area between the course and the stations: leaving a station through its IN arch is a 2-minute penalty.²

Race week

The rules in that list come from Hyrox's rulebook.² You'll know your start time before race day, so eat your rehearsal breakfast the same number of hours before it as you did in week 11. Warm up with 10 minutes of easy jogging, a few short faster bursts and a handful of wall balls if there's room, but stay off the course and the Roxzone until your start: walking through can trigger your chip and give you a wrong time.

What a coach on the call changes

Everything above works on your own, and plenty of people finish their first Hyrox with nothing more. What you can't judge from inside the effort is your form late in a set, whether race pace is really race pace, and whether the Saturday session happens at all after a long week.

That's what Bespoke Fit is built for. Every session is a live 1‑on‑1 video call with your own coach, in our app on iPhone, Android or a browser, wherever you can prop a phone up: at home, or in your gym if it's happy with a phone on a stand. Your coach writes your plan on your training calendar, sees your heart rate live from an Apple Watch or a Bluetooth strap, and calls a no-rep mid-set, so you fix it in training rather than in front of a judge. And a session is a set time with a person waiting on the call, which is what keeps the station day from being the one you skip.

Picture a Saturday in week 10

It's the second half: four runs and stations 5 to 8 at race weight. On the first run your heart rate is already higher than the pace deserves, so your coach slows the next kilometre down. Around lunge 40 your back knee stops reaching the floor; your coach says so on the next rep, and the rest of the set touches. At the wall balls they break you into tens before the reps start missing the target. You mention your left knee felt odd on Thursday, and before you hang up, next Wednesday's intervals have moved to the bike. The recap shows what you lifted and any records.

What the camera sees. A phone on a stand covers a few yards (a few metres) of floor, and that's where the no-reps live: wall balls, burpees, lunges up and back, the SkiErg and the rower are all in frame. For a 50 m sled push or a 100 m carry, your coach sees you set off and come back, and goes by your time and your heart rate in between. The run in a round is on a treadmill in view, or out the door and back. Earbuds in, and you hear every call.

That works because your coach knows you. Each coach has 12 members at most, and we hold to it when we assign coaches, so your coach remembers last week. Two of our coaches, JP and Sean, are Hyrox-certified, and Sean has led Hyrox group classes. You don't pick from a list: a head coach meets you on a 30-minute call and matches you, so tell them about the race, and that you'd like a coach who knows Hyrox.

What we can't do: nobody is there in person to load a sled or spot you, and we don't supply equipment.

What it costs, and who should skip it

For this plan, a coached week is two calls of about an hour, the strength and stations day and the run plus station day, with your two runs written into your plan for you to do alone. Sessions run 45 to 90 minutes, and most people settle at around an hour.

14 days free, then $299 a month, cancel anytime, for unlimited sessions. Two a week works out at about $35 a session, against $50 to $90 for an in-person trainer in the US.¹⁰ Put the intervals on a treadmill on a call too and it's about $23; with all four on a call, about $17. The price doesn't change with how many sessions you do, so your coach plans the week you need, not the week you can afford.

To test it on a race build, ask your coach to schedule both coached days in each trial week, run plus station included; the 14 days start at your first session, not at signup. Then judge two things: did your coach catch a no-rep or a pacing mistake you'd have missed, and did your plan change because of it? If not, the free plan on this page will serve you just as well.

Skip it if:

• Your gym's Hyrox classes already give you the plan and the feedback you need. A class gives you real sleds, a coach in the room and people to race with. That coach has a whole room to watch, and the plan is the class's, not yours. You can also do both: classes for sled time, calls for the stations and the plan.
• You've raced before and just want the programming. An app plan like HWPO HYROX is $40 a month or $384 a year, two to five days a week, with substitutions when you don't have a sled. Its page doesn't describe anyone watching your form.¹¹
• You want to train whenever the gym is quiet. Our sessions are set times your coach books with you.
• You want meal plans or macros. We don't do nutrition coaching.
• $299 a month would strain your budget. The plan on this page costs nothing, and it will get you to the finish.

Sources

1. HYROX, Find my level, read November 12, 2026: the three self-check questions, and "99% of our athletes reach the finish line". ↩ ↩²

2. HYROX, Singles Rulebook, season 26/27, read November 12, 2026: race format, station order and distances, Open weights, wall ball target heights, age groups and minimum age, movement standards and penalties, lap counting and missed-lap penalties, Roxzone arches, permitted and forbidden items, footwear, hydration and nutrition, check-in, start times and the start tunnel, and keeping off the course before your start. It also asks injured racers to have medical clearance and strongly recommends that pregnant racers consult a medical professional. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. HYROX, The fitness race, read November 12, 2026: the Open, Pro, Doubles and Relay formats and the Open weights (sled weights including the sled). For the relay, the Relay Rulebook, season 26/27, read the same day: "each Relay Member has to run 2 x 1 km and perform the 2 corresponding workout stations". ↩ ↩²

4. HYROX, Best HYROX preparation, read November 12, 2026: "50% is Running", "you will be out for an average of 90 minutes", and "Don't start too fast". The same page mentions a 125 kg (276 lb) sled, which matches no current division; the rulebook's weights are the ones above. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Brandt, T., Ebel, C., Lebahn, C. & Schmidt, A., 2025. Acute physiological responses and performance determinants in Hyrox©, a new running-focused high intensity functional fitness trend. Frontiers in Physiology. Eleven recreational racers (three women) each did a simulated Open race alone in a gym, with treadmill runs, a non-competition sled and 75 wall balls for the women. Runs took about 51 of 86.5 minutes (medians); faster finishes went with higher VO2 max, more endurance training and lower body fat, not grip strength or muscle mass; run 5 had the longest median time (7.4 minutes), with runs 6 and 8 close behind (6.8). A small study: a pointer, not a law. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Nielsen, R.Ø., Parner, E.T., Nohr, E.A., Sørensen, H., Lind, M. & Rasmussen, S., 2014. Excessive progression in weekly running distance and risk of running-related injuries: an association which varies according to type of injury. Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. An exploratory one-year study of novice runners. Distance-related injuries were more frequent with a rise above 30% over two weeks than below 10% (hazard ratio 1.59, 95% CI 0.96 to 2.66, p = .07); overall injury rates did not differ between groups. ↩

7. HYROX, Gym Finder, read November 12, 2026: search for affiliated gyms by postcode. It doesn't list each gym's equipment. ↩

8. HYROX, Doubles Rulebook, season 26/27, read November 12, 2026: both team members "must run together for the entire 1,000m", a 1-minute penalty if one runs ahead, the "you go, I go" example, and "the resting athlete must remain on their feet". ↩

9. Rox Lyfe, What is a good HYROX time?, read November 12, 2026: average finishes of 1:27:56 for Men's Open and 1:36:22 for Women's Open, and first-timer bands of 1:30 to 1:50+ for men and 1:40 to 2:00+ for women, from race-results data published by RoxFit. The sample size isn't stated, and Hyrox publishes no official average beyond its 90-minute line. ↩

10. Bark, updated January 16, 2026. How much does a personal trainer cost?, read November 12, 2026: an average of $50 to $90 a session in the US, varying with location. ↩

11. HWPO, HWPO HYROX, read November 12, 2026: $40 a month or $384 a year, two to five days a week, "Sleds are preferred but substitutions are provided where needed". HWPO is a competing service. ↩