HYROX: From Average to Elite

As I write this, in April 2022, Hunter McIntyre has just broken the HYROX world record in an incredible time of 55mins 09secs (update – he has since beaten that – you can see the list of up to date HYROX World Records here).

After picking my jaw up off the floor at just how impressive this was, I started to wonder – considering all the data we have available to us – is there anything we can learn from the best of the best in the sport, other than just “get fitter”.

In the same way a non-league footballer might watch clips of Harry Kane to work out how he positions himself on the pitch, or a 28-handicap golfer might watch the type of shots Rory McIlroy plays around the green, all in an attempt to improve their performance, could there be anything that the average HYROX competitor might be able to pick up from the Elites of the competition?

Is it just running they are primarily better at? Which of the functional exercises do they really excel at, and which are worthy our focus over and above some of the others?  Are the Elites noticeably better on run 5 than run 8, or something along those lines?

So, I started to gather some data…

The Method

I’ll say upfront, I’m not a mathematician.  There’s a chance that any mathematicians reading this will have heart palpitations at just how flawed my methodology is.  Maybe I should have used means instead of medians, or greater sample sizes. Maybe I lack statistical significance.

I’m also not at the Elite level in HYROX.

But don’t worry as I’m not going to be making any conclusions or giving any specific advice.  If you want specific advice for your situation, check out our coaching options.  Rather I’ll just make some observations and raise some questions, that will hopefully help you in your own performance, training and race planning.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve done…

I’ve taken, from the HYROX leaderboard, 15 of the best HYROX performances ever – for both female and male at Pro level. I’ve then taken the median of their times for each run and functional station.  This group I’m calling “Elite”.

I repeated this for a sample of athletes who achieved a time broadly similar to what HYROX have said is the average time achieved at Pro level (roughly 90mins). This group I’m calling “Average”. 

I’ve deliberately avoided including any athlete more than once.  For example, Hunter McIntyre has 5 of the top 10 times ever, at the time of writing, but I’ve only included the fastest of those.  I’ve also avoided anyone who got a time penalty to avoid skewing the data.

The Findings

Here were the results…

You can draw your own conclusions from that data if you wish but here’s some of what I thought were potentially the most useful findings…

Running

Running is a large part of HYROX (it takes up 52% of the average elite race) and, surprise surprise, the Elites are better at running than the Average.  Over the 8km in a HYROX race the men are nearly 12mins quicker and women nearly 10 mins quicker.  Most people will have expected this, so I won’t dwell on advising you just to become a faster runner. But it is, of course, important.

I do, however, think it’s worth pointing out that the Elites sampled run at an average pace of 3.51mins/km (men), or 4.18mins/km (women).  I feel almost embarrassed to say this as I’m nowhere near the standard of these athletes, but it is a running pace that I personally can get my head around.  It feels achievable to do that (at least if I just look at the running portion in isolation).

When Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in under 2 hours, his average splits were a pace of 2.51mins per km – for the length of a marathon.  That I simply can’t get my head around.  But the Elites running pace in HYROX I (perhaps deludedly) can.

If we look at it in the context of world records for the Marathon, Half Marathon, and half distance Ironman (where the running portion is a half marathon, after a 1.9km swim and 90km bike ride), you can see the running split times are longer in HYROX, despite it being a shorter event…

Of course, that may not be a completely fair comparison.  They are different events, HYROX has not been going for a long time (and we may eventually see much quicker running splits), and I’m comparing World Records with an average of 15 Elite HYROX competitors.  But I still think it has some relevance. And what I’m really trying to stress is that you can still be very good at HYROX without being one of the world’s best runners – there is more than just running for you to think about.

I suspect though that the Elite HYROX athletes are world class at compromised running. To run that pace consistently through the race, after all the functional exercises, is very impressive.  I wonder if Kipchoge could do that. Or even if Kipchoge could have got to the end of the race.  Maybe he’d have had to bail out at the sled push?! Who knows.

To summarise from a running perspective, improving your running is likely important if you want to move yourself closer to the Elite HYROX standard.  But I don’t think you need to be world class at running to be world class at HYROX. You do, however, need to be very good at compromised running, and have the endurance to sustain a solid running pace over an event that lasts 54mins+. In this article we talk more about compromised running and how to train for it.

Pacing

It feels to me as if the Elites may be better at pacing themselves than the average athlete, especially on the first run.  This is certainly the case if we just look at the men – women don’t seem to suffer so much with this problem.

You can see that the blue line is much flatter for the Elite men, indicating their run times are more consistent across the race. The first 1km run for the Average men (orange line), in particular, is much quicker than their average splits.  What impact could this be having on the rest of their race? Should they be conserving their energy better?

The fact that women seem to be better at pacing themselves than men is no surprise.  This study showed that women were 18.33% better than men at keeping an even pace in a marathon.

Is pacing even important? In an event as long as HYROX, almost certainly. The consensus seems to be that for longer events (such as HYROX) not starting out too quickly is a sensible decision.  For shorter distances, a faster start (to an extent) can be ok, but as most competitors are taking 60mins+ for HYROX, it is likely you want to be holding yourself back a little on the first couple of runs.   Could this be why the Average woman is much closer in time to an Elite Woman (23mins 49secs in our data), than an Average Man is to an Elite Man (30mins 24secs)?  Click here to read our article on how to appropriately pace the running at HYROX. 

Ski Pace

It’s harder to gauge but I suspect the men are going a touch too quick on the SkiErg too, relative to their overall ability. The SkiErg has the smallest difference in times between Elite and Average competitors.  This might be expected.  However, as we know the men are almost certainly starting out too quickly on their first run, it’s quite possible this is carrying over to the Ski as well (which is the first of the functional stations).

The men are 30 seconds slower on the Ski, and women are 39 secs slower.  I know personally if I go maybe 5 secs/500m slower on the SkiErg, it significantly lowers my heart rate, even though that only equates to 10 seconds slower over 1km.

If you are able, I would suggest experimenting with your ski split times in training, and see how much better you feel if you go a little slower than you’re planning to for your next race. What impact does an extra, say, 10 seconds on your 1km time do for your heart rate and how you feel afterwards? 10 seconds in the context of a HYROX, is a pretty small number, and could save you a greater amount of time in the remainder of the race.

Sled Push / Sled Pull

The sled-based events at HYROX are the 2 main areas that benefit from an athlete’s strength.  So, you might expect the difference in times between the Average and Elite to be broadly similar on both the sled push and sled pull.  But it’s not.  Average men are 55secs slower on push, and a whopping 3.17mins slower on the pull.  The women are 47secs slower on push, and 2.42mins slower on the pull.

Looked at another way, Elite men spend 18% longer on sled pull than their sled push, and Elite women spend 30% longer.  But the Average spend 78% (men) or 74% (women) longer on the pull than the push!

As I see it, there are a few things to think about here:

– Are Average athletes pushing too hard on the sled push, relative to their strength levels?  And if so, could that be screwing them up for the rest of the race?

– Or are the Average just much worse at the sled pull? In which case, working on technique, pull strength and posterior chain is very important.

For most people reading this, what the Average athlete is doing doesn’t really matter. But could something similar be happening in your performance? Is your sled pull to sled push ratio similar to that of an Elite athlete? If not, could you be pushing too hard on the sled pull, or neglecting the work needed to improve your sled pull times?

Roxzone

As hesitant as I’ve been to give advice in this article, I will now break that and say one thing; If you want a good time, don’t f*** about in the Roxzone!

The difference between the Elites and Averages in time spent in the Roxzone is quite startling.  Average men spend 4.04mins longer in there, and Average women 2mins 25secs. That seems far too long.

The size of the Roxzone does vary by venue but I would roughly estimate it to be 800m on average. Therefore, it’s a reasonable expectation for your Roxzone time to broadly be 80% of your average 1km split times.  For Elites the data shows 75% (men) and 88% (Women).  But for Average athletes it is 131% (men) and 112% (women)!

The Roxzone was certainly a bigger area than I’d been expecting prior to my first event.  Personally speaking, I suspect I subconsciously started to relax a little after each run as soon as I entered the Roxzone.  It wasn’t a conscious thing, but my Roxzone time of 6 minutes in my first race suggests that it was happening.  That is something that the Elites never do.  They stop running as soon as they are about to start the next exercise. And as soon as they’ve finished it, they start again.  Roxzone or running track are treated the same; for running on.

One enticing thing about the Roxzone is the drinks provided there.  In a hot HYROX race it becomes very tempting to stop at the water table and sip on a cool drink before setting off again.  The Elites may grab a water on the way past, but I doubt they are stopping for a relaxing beverage and a chat.

To be fair, as the Elites complete the race in a faster time, they have less need to take on as much water, so that may be a factor here, but it can’t explain the difference entirely.

If you’ve entered a HYROX in the past, have you spent too long in the Roxzone? How could you speed that up? Does the time you spent in the zone reasonably compare to how quickly you might run 800m(ish)?

Going forward, I plan to think of the Roxzone as just another functional exercise but one I want to win. Rather than relax as I enter the Roxzone, its game on. In fact, as I write this, I’m wondering if in I’ll have a game of “floor is lava” with myself where I imagine the floor in the Roxzone is lava and I have to get out of there as quickly as I can.  Of course, it may mean I end up doing the runs or functional stations slower, but it’s worth a go!

Summary

The data I’ve gathered does show that Elites are better than the Average at all the stations, and all the runs.  That’s probably to be expected.  All areas are important in improving your times.

Aside from what’s already been mentioned above, there is a particularly large difference in times on the Wall Balls and Burpee Broad Jumps, meaning these should likely be prioritised, for most people, over and above working on SkiErg and Rowing, for example (where the differences are much smaller).

It will obviously be different for each person, as we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, but to summarise where I think some of the lowest hanging fruit is in bringing an Average athlete closer to Elite level it would be:

– Working on compromised running

– Improved pacing (men especially)

– Improved performance on the sled pull (with an aim to get your sled pull to sled push ratio more closely aligned with that of the Elites)

– Reduced time in the Roxzone (bringing your Roxzone time to somewhere around 75-90% of your average 1km running time across the event)