- Running is the larger share of a HYROX race. In the only published study of the format, finish time tracked aerobic fitness rather than strength across 8 km of running.
- Strength work still earns its place across the 8 stations, mainly through running economy and tolerating fixed loads, not through a bigger one-rep max.
- Two to three strength sessions a week is the figure the distance-running research supports.
- Interference between lifting and endurance work is real but narrow, and running is the modality that causes it.
- When both land in one session, lift first. When run quality matters more, put them on different days.
Almost every HYROX strength training article gives you the same four exercises and never asks the prior question: is strength the thing holding you back? The first published physiological study of a HYROX race suggests that for most recreational athletes it is not. That does not make lifting pointless. It changes what you are lifting for, and how much of your week it should occupy. This page covers the reasoning behind the programming rather than another calendar. For a week-by-week schedule, start with the full HYROX training guide.
How much of HYROX is actually strength?
The race format is eight rounds, each a 1 km run followed by one functional workout station. That is 8 legs of 1000 m, 8 km in total, plus 8 workouts, with every transition passing through the ROXZONE, the central transition zone athletes run through between every run and station. Written out that way, the shape of the event is obvious: it is a running race with load in it.
How much strength training do you need for HYROX? Two to three sessions a week, run alongside your normal running volume, is what the endurance research supports. That is enough to improve running economy and to handle the station loads without eating into the running that decides most of your finish time. Beyond three sessions, the cost usually lands on run quality.
The evidence for that framing comes from Brandt and colleagues (2025), the first scientific study of a HYROX race. Eleven recreational HYROX athletes completed a simulated Open race with a median finish of 86.5 minutes. Running accounted for 51.2 minutes of that against 32.8 minutes of station work, a significant difference (p = 0.003). Faster finish times correlated with higher VO2max (p = 0.01), greater endurance training volume (p = 0.04) and lower body fat percentage (p = 0.03). Hand grip strength was measured and did not emerge as a significant correlate. The authors described HYROX as a format with an emphasis on endurance capacity and moderate to low requirements in terms of maximum strength.
What the research population was, and why it matters
Read that finding carefully before you act on it. The sample was eleven recreational athletes in a simulated race, not a competition, and the analysis was correlational, so it cannot show that training endurance causes a faster time. Eleven participants is also too few to detect a modest strength effect. "Strength did not correlate with finish time" is not the same statement as "strength does not matter." What the study describes is which qualities separate athletes inside a group that already trains, not what happens when someone who has never lifted starts lifting.
Why the heaviest stations are not the slowest
The same study found the two heaviest stations, sled push and sled pull, were completed fastest of all 8, while blood lactate and rated exertion both peaked at the final station. That makes sense once you look at the numbers. The sled push covers 50 m in a 4 x 12.5 m shuttle at 335 lb (152 kg) for men's Open and 225 lb (102 kg) for women's Open. It is heavy, and it is over quickly. The damage it does shows up two stations later.
What strength training is actually for in HYROX
If a bigger squat does not obviously buy you a faster finish, strength work needs a different justification. There are three that hold up.
Running economy. Berryman and colleagues (2018) pooled 28 studies of strength training added to endurance sport and found a moderate improvement in middle- and long-distance performance, net SMD 0.52 (95% CI 0.33 to 0.70), with the energy cost of locomotion improving at 0.65 (95% CI 0.32 to 0.98) and maximal force at 0.99 (95% CI 0.80 to 1.18). Maximal-force training produced larger improvements than lighter intensities. Blagrove and colleagues (2018) reviewed 24 studies and reported running economy improving by 2 to 8 percent versus control, though the authors state plainly that this was not a consistent finding across all the work they reviewed.
That same review contains the most awkward fact on this page. Strength training left VO2max, blood lactate and body composition essentially unchanged. VO2max is the quality that best predicted HYROX finish time in Brandt's sample. The thing that best predicts your time is the thing lifting does not improve, which is why strength work is a supplement to aerobic training and never a substitute for it.
Load tolerance. The station loads are absolute, not scaled to bodyweight. A 44 lb (20 kg) sandbag over 100 m costs a 90 kg athlete a smaller fraction of their capacity than it costs a 65 kg athlete. Getting stronger does not change the load, it changes what share of your ceiling the load occupies, which is what lets you keep running afterwards.
Durability under fatigue. Every station is followed by another run. The quality you need is the ability to produce force with tired legs and then transition back to running mechanics, which is the subject of running on compromised legs.
The station loads you are training against
Programming is easier when you know the target. These are the singles Open loads.
| Station | Distance or reps | Women's Open | Men's Open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sled Push | 50 m (4 x 12.5 m) | 225 lb (102 kg) | 335 lb (152 kg) |
| Sled Pull | 50 m (4 x 12.5 m) | 172 lb (78 kg) | 227 lb (103 kg) |
| Farmers Carry | 200 m | 2 x 35 lb (16 kg) | 2 x 53 lb (24 kg) |
| Sandbag Lunges | 100 m | 22 lb (10 kg) | 44 lb (20 kg) |
| Wall Balls | 100 reps | 9 lb (4 kg) to 2.70 m | 13 lb (6 kg) to 3.00 m |
Singles racing is split into Women, Women Pro, Men, and Men Pro, and PRO divisions use heavier loads than Open. A men's Pro sled push sits at 445 lb (202 kg) and a men's Pro farmers carry at 2 x 71 lb (32 kg), so the gap between tiers is large enough to change how you program. Check your own division in the weight standards tool rather than working from a number a coach quoted at you.
Which lifts transfer, and which are gym habits
Choose exercises by the demand each station makes rather than by what a listicle ranked. Four demands cover the loaded work, and one short list covers the gym habits that do not earn their place.
Horizontal force production, for the sleds
Pushing the men's Open 335 lb (152 kg) over 50 m, then pulling 227 lb (103 kg) hand over hand for another 50 m, is a horizontal force problem solved by heavy hinge and squat patterns. Trap-bar and conventional deadlifts, back and front squats, split squats and heavy sled work itself all build the same posterior-chain force. Berryman's finding that maximal-force intensities outperformed lighter work applies directly here: this is the part of your programme that should be genuinely heavy.
Loaded carries and grip, for the farmers carry
200 m carrying 2 x 35 lb (16 kg) or 2 x 53 lb (24 kg) is a trunk and grip endurance task more than a strength one. Long carries at or slightly above race load, done for distance rather than time, are the direct preparation. Grip deserves a caveat of its own: Brandt's group measured it and found no relationship with finish time in eleven athletes, which hints that grip limits this one station rather than the race as a whole, on a sample too small to settle it. Session ideas live in the HYROX workouts library.
Unilateral and lunge patterns, for the sandbag
100 m of walking lunges under the women's Open 22 lb (10 kg) or the men's 44 lb (20 kg), with the bag across the shoulders, arrives at exactly the point in the race where your legs are worst. Rear-foot elevated split squats, walking lunges under load, and step-ups build the single-leg strength and the hip stability that keep the pattern from falling apart.
Repeat-effort leg endurance, for wall balls
100 reps to 3.00 m for men and 2.70 m for women is a muscular endurance problem, not a maximal one. Front squats, thrusters and high-rep goblet work in sets that mimic race sets prepare it better than any heavy single. Brandt's data put the lactate and exertion peak right here.
What does not transfer
Bench pressing, direct arm work, heavy singles chased for their own sake, and any hypertrophy block that displaces running volume. None of it is harmful in isolation. It just competes for the same recovery and the same hours as work that does transfer.
How much, how often, and in what order
Frequency
Two to three strength sessions per week is the explicit recommendation from Blagrove's systematic review, using a variety of modalities rather than one narrow rep range. It is a useful default because it is enough stimulus to change running economy while leaving room for the running volume that Brandt's data suggests matters more.
Sequencing within a session
Eddens and colleagues (2018) pooled ten studies of programmes lasting five weeks or more and found that doing resistance work before endurance work in the same session produced a +6.91 percent greater change in lower-body dynamic strength (95% CI 1.96 to 11.87, p = 0.006) than the reverse order. The same analysis found no effect of order on lower-body hypertrophy (p = 0.40), lower-body static strength (p = 0.98), VO2max or body fat percentage. So lift first when both are in one session, but hold the claim to what was measured. The benefit is real and narrow, and if the run is the priority session that day, run first anyway.
Sequencing across the week
Doma and colleagues (2017) reviewed the evidence that a single resistance session leaves residual fatigue capable of impairing a subsequent endurance session for hours to days, through impaired neural recruitment, reduced movement efficiency, soreness and reduced glycogen. That paper is a narrative review, and the authors are explicit that the link between these acute responses and subsequent training adaptation has not been fully established. Treat it as an explanation for why Tuesday's run feels terrible after Monday's squats, not as proof that same-day training blunts your progress.
The practical rule that falls out of it: put your highest-quality run of the week as far as possible from your heaviest lower-body lift. How to lay the rest of the days out is covered in the HYROX training schedule guide, and the recovery side in the recovery guide.
The interference question, answered honestly
Wilson and colleagues (2012) analysed 21 studies and 422 effect sizes and found strength gains averaging 1.76 for strength-only training against 1.44 for concurrent training, with similar gaps for hypertrophy (1.23 against 0.85) and power (0.91 against 0.55). Their moderator analysis identified running, but not cycling, as the modality producing significant decrements, and found endurance duration correlated more strongly negative with gains (r -0.29 to -0.75) than endurance frequency did (r -0.26 to -0.35).
Lundberg and colleagues (2022) revisited the question with 15 studies and reached a softer conclusion. Whole-muscle hypertrophy did not appear to be negatively affected by concurrent training. At the muscle-fibre level they found a small negative effect, SMD -0.23 (95% CI -0.46 to -0.00, p = 0.050), a borderline result whose confidence interval touches zero and which should not be quoted as a solid effect. Type I fibres (-0.34, p = 0.078) and type II fibres (-0.13, p = 0.315) were not individually significant. The one clear subgroup finding independently confirmed Wilson's asymmetry: a negative effect on type I fibres when the aerobic training was running rather than cycling (SMD -0.81, 95% CI -1.26 to -0.36).
Put together: interference exists, it is specific to running, long sessions cost more than frequent ones, and it is smaller than gym folklore suggests. For a HYROX athlete the running is not optional, so the answer is to manage the overlap rather than to fear it.
Building the week around the race, not around the gym
The number of days you have decides the ratio, and the ratio should tilt toward running as the race approaches. Treat this as a priority order rather than a fixed calendar.
| Days available | Run to strength | Priority order |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2:1, with one combined session | Easy volume, one quality run, one full-body lift |
| 4 | 2:2 | Two runs, two lifts, lift furthest from the quality run |
| 5 | 3:2 | Easy run, quality run, race-pace station work, two lifts |
| 6 | 4:2 | Add a long easy run rather than a third lift |
Notice what happens as days get added: they go to running, not to lifting. Two to three strength sessions covers the stimulus the research supports, and everything above that is aerobic development. Session content for each slot is in the workouts library, and the hub page, the full HYROX training guide, ties the pieces together.
What to cut as race day approaches
Heavy lifting is the first thing to reduce. The residual fatigue mechanisms Doma described are exactly what you do not want present in race week, and strength is the slowest of your qualities to fade, so a couple of quiet weeks costs you far less than arriving tired. You keep the adaptation and lose the fatigue, which is a good trade. Treat that second half as coaching convention rather than something the studies above measured: none of them tested what happens to strength across a taper.
Keep the movement patterns, cut the load and the volume, protect the runs. A light session of squats, carries and lunges at a fraction of your working weight keeps you feeling normal without costing anything. The taper sits inside a wider plan, which the 12-week HYROX plan lays out in full.
Watch: two different ways to train for HYROX
This 10-week comparison from wod-science tests two contrasting training approaches against each other rather than demonstrating exercises, which makes it a useful companion to the programming logic above.
Frequently asked questions
How much strength training do I need for HYROX?
Two to three strength sessions per week is what the distance-running research supports, alongside your running. That is enough to improve running economy and handle the station loads without eating into run volume. More than three tends to cost you running quality, which matters across 8 km of racing.
Is HYROX more strength or cardio?
Cardio, by a clear margin. In the only published study of a HYROX race, running took roughly 51 minutes of an 86-minute finish against 33 minutes of station work, and faster times correlated with VO2max and endurance volume rather than strength. The sample was eleven recreational athletes in a simulated race, so treat it as directional.
Should I lift or run first on the same day?
Lift first. A meta-analysis of ten concurrent-training studies found resistance before endurance produced about a 7 percent greater improvement in lower-body dynamic strength than the reverse order (95% CI 1.96 to 11.87, p = 0.006). The same analysis found no order effect on muscle size, static strength or aerobic capacity, so the benefit is real but narrow.
Will running ruin my strength gains?
Less than the gym believes, though running is the modality that interferes most. Meta-analyses find running rather than cycling drives the measurable decrements, and long sessions cost more than frequent ones. Recent work found whole-muscle size largely unaffected, with a small, borderline effect at the fibre level. Plan around it rather than fearing it.
What are the best lifts for HYROX?
Heavy hinges and squats for the sleds, loaded carries for the 200 m farmers carry, walking lunges under load for the sandbag, and repeat-effort front squat and thruster work for the 100 wall balls. Choose by the demand each station makes, not by exercise popularity.
Do I need to deadlift for HYROX?
No single lift is required. The deadlift is a convenient way to build the posterior-chain force the sled push and pull demand, and heavier intensities produced larger performance gains than lighter ones in the endurance-sport meta-analysis. Any heavy hinge pattern you can load and recover from does the same job.
How strong do you need to be for HYROX?
HYROX publishes no strength standard, so any number you see quoted is a coach's opinion rather than a rule. The useful benchmark is relative: the loads are fixed, so aim to move 335 lb (152 kg) or 225 lb (102 kg) over 50 m without redlining. Check your own division in the weight standards tool.
Can you finish HYROX without lifting weights?
Yes, and many runners do. The stations are short relative to 8 km of running, and in the only study of the race so far the heaviest ones were completed quickest. Skipping strength work entirely tends to cost you on the sandbag lunges and wall balls, where accumulated fatigue peaks, rather than on the sleds.
Should I stop lifting before a HYROX race?
Reduce rather than stop. A hard resistance session leaves residual fatigue that can degrade running quality for hours to days, which is the last thing you want in race week. Keep the movement patterns, cut load and volume, and put your final heavy lower-body session well clear of race day.
Does strength training improve your VO2max?
No, and that is the awkward part. Systematic review evidence shows strength training improves running economy and time-trial performance while leaving VO2max, blood lactate and body composition essentially unchanged. Since VO2max was the strongest correlate of finish time in the only study of the race, strength work cannot substitute for aerobic training.
Is CrossFit good preparation for HYROX?
Partly. It builds the mixed-modal capacity and the movement patterns the 8 stations demand, but it rarely builds the sustained aerobic base that 8 km of running requires. Most CrossFit athletes coming to HYROX need to add continuous running volume rather than more strength work.
References
- HYROX Official Competition Rulebook, Singles. maintain.hyrox.com (the primary authority for every station load, distance and rep count on this page).
- Brandt T, Ebel C, Lebahn C, Schmidt A (2025). Acute physiological responses and performance determinants in Hyrox. Frontiers in Physiology 16:1519240. Full text (n = 11 recreational athletes, simulated race, correlational).
- Blagrove RC, Howatson G, Hayes PR (2018). Effects of strength training on the physiological determinants of middle- and long-distance running performance. Sports Medicine 48(5):1117-1149. Full text (running economy improved in most but not all studies; VO2max unchanged).
- Lundberg TR, Feuerbacher JF, Sünkeler M, Schumann M (2022). The effects of concurrent aerobic and strength training on muscle fiber hypertrophy. Sports Medicine 52(10):2391-2403. Full text (fibre-level effect small and borderline at p = 0.050).
- Eddens L, van Someren K, Howatson G (2018). The role of intra-session exercise sequence in the interference effect. Sports Medicine 48(1):177-188. Full text (lift-first benefit limited to lower-body dynamic strength).
- Berryman N, Mujika I, Arvisais D, Roubeix M, Binet C, Bosquet L (2018). Strength training for middle- and long-distance performance: a meta-analysis. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 13(1):57-63. Publisher record (net SMD 0.52, 95% CI 0.33 to 0.70).
- Wilson JM, Marin PJ, Rhea MR, Wilson SMC, Loenneke JP, Anderson JC (2012). Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 26(8):2293-2307. Publisher record (running, not cycling, drove the decrements).
- Doma K, Deakin GB, Bentley DJ (2017). Implications of impaired endurance performance following single bouts of resistance training: an alternate concurrent training perspective. Sports Medicine 47(11):2187-2200. Publisher record (a narrative review, the weakest evidence used here).
- HYROX official site, for race format and division structure. hyrox.com