Tara Maher
Last weekend my Instagram story feed was flooded with stories from a Hyrox event in Malaga. I've seen this genre of competition slowly but surely take over my Instagram and TikTok feeds but to be honest, I’d no idea what exactly it entailed. I was under the impression it was similar to crossfit, not that I really knew what that was either.
After a deep dive, Hyrox combines both running & functional workout stations, where participants run 1km, followed by one functional workout station, repeated eight times.
Each event is held in expansive exhibition halls where competitors can be cheered on from their supporters.
There's no finishing time restriction and no qualification entry requirements, and with each Hyrox race consisting of waves of starters every ten minutes throughout the day, there's no fear of finishing in ‘last’ place. It's an own-pace, own-race event. Hyrox races are held globally with the next Irish race to be held in Dublin in November.
Hyrox is a standardised event. The workout never changes. The same exercises, the same amount of running in the exact same order. Compared to CrossFit competition which will typically consist of several different workouts on the same day. Competitors don’t know what those workouts will be until shortly beforehand, meaning there is a much greater amount of variety.
Running dominates the Hyrox event, while in CrossFit, it generally doesn’t feature too heavily in the sport.
CrossFit workouts span twenty minutes compared to Hyrox which typically lasts an hour and thirty minutes.
The culmination of a CrossFit season is the CrossFit Games were the best CrossFitters in the world battle it out over a few days, and several workouts, to be crowned the best male or female CrossFitter in the world (based on who accumulates the most points across all the workouts).
HYROX similarly holds a finals event – the HYROX World Championships. As with all HYROX events, the concept / race doesn’t change for the finals. There is a separate race for the “Elite 15” which in theory is the best 15 men and best 15 women. The winner of that race is crowned as the HYROX World Champion. At the World Championship event there are also hundreds of athletes participating in the age group divisions.
Georgia Keating from Crosshaven competed in her first Hyrox event in Malaga last weekend. Georgia, who is big into CrossFit decided to give Hyrox a go after seeing it “blow up on social media”. Many of her friends competed in last year's Dublin event but she wanted to see for herself what all the fuss was about.
She has been training vigorously for the event for weeks, getting 4-6 CrossFit sessions in a week alongside two running sessions.
“It was an amazing experience!” Georgia said, “It was so well organised and the atmosphere was unreal. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but it was worth it.”
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