If you run into even the vaguest of fitness circles, chances are you’ve encountered someone feverishly talking about Hyrox. The indoor global fitness race is everywhere.
Photographs of people pushing sleds, doing burpees, carrying kettlebells and running like their lives depend on it are the new fitness collectibles and everyone is welcome to try their hand at tasting blood.
Hyrox is to 2026 what padel was to 2025 and I’m amused to catch signs of contagion at my local gym. While a number of Windhoek-based fitness centres have hosted Hyrox simulation events and training classes, my gym had yet to show obvious signs of Hyroxification. But then, seemingly overnight, a bunch of unrelated gymgoers started doing sled pulls.
Weighted sled pulls are one of eight functional exercises that make up the Hyrox hellscape. The others are a 1 000-metre SkiErg, then a 50-metre sled push, 80 metres of burpee broad jumps, a 1 000-metre row, a 200-metre Farmer’s Carry, 100 metres of weighted sandbag lunges and 100 wall balls.
Did I mention that you start by running one kilometre and then run the same between each exercise? No. Okay, so there’s that. If this sounds like fun to you, you’re not alone.
Described as ‘The World Series of Fitness Racing’ on hyrox.com, Hyrox is huge. The website reports that there were over 80 global Hyrox races last year which hosted more than 550 000 athletes and 350 000 spectators. The website also issues a challenge: “Are you ready to take your training to the next level & join the #HYROXFAMILY?”
The self-preservation in me says “no!”. But then one random weekday, I’m at the gym doing a Farmer’s Carry. I don’t know how it happened.
My fitness routine involves walking blindly past the kettlebell rack but suddenly I have a 12kg weight in each hand. It’s almost compulsive. I’m a woman possessed by the spirit of trends.
I take a step forward and gravity has a field day. My arm muscles strain in new and perplexing ways and I’m carrying 4kg less than Hyrox’s starting sixteen. As I make my way up and down the studio, I wonder if this is how the people who got hooked to padel felt. One minute they couldn’t open social media without the sight of fluorescent yellow balls, the next they were on a court somewhere with no idea how they got there.
Still walking, arms begging for the end, I realise my move from civilian to Hyrox-curious is a little more linear. In the recesses of my mind, in a folder marked ‘Scrolling’, I see a photo of Capetonian influencer Nadia Jaftha doing a Farmer’s Carry at an official Hyrox event. I haven’t yet done the Hyrox deep dive that will illuminate all the details of the race, but I’ve seen Nadia doing a carry.
So, I try one too. (Ah, so that’s how influencing works!)
The regret is instant. But then, amazingly, carrying 24kg of merciless weight for 200 metres is doable and I can imagine working my way up to thirty-two. I grin at nobody in particular, thinking “Hyrox, anyone?” and suddenly get the hype.
Hyrox’s whole thing is that it isn’t exclusively for elite athletes.
Sure, you can go in balls-to-the-wall, earn the fastest times and win the Hyrox World Championships. But, with a little training, all kinds of people can do it for fun, as a fitness challenge or for a tad more will to live.
On a functional level, the eight exercise stations are akin to movements people use in regular life. So, practising for a Hyrox race should, presumably, make your everyday pushing, pulling, squatting and carrying easier.
At a wedding a few weeks ago, a man walked up to my sister and her companion and asked a question I’m sure many of us will have to answer in the unrelenting struggle against nihilism.
“Do you guys do Hyrox?”
For now, my answer is no.
But today, I’m trying wall balls.
– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
