Lauren Weeks is a HYROX athlete and three-time World Champion, widely considered the most decorated competitor in the sport’s history.
She claimed world titles in 2020, 2021, and 2023. Remarkably, at the 2022 HYROX World Championships, Lauren competed while eight months pregnant – and finished in 9th place. She finished 2nd at the 2024 World Championships and then, in 2025, further cemented her legacy by setting World Records in both the HYROX Pro division (56:23) and the HYROX Open division (55:38).
Lauren has become an inspiration to women around the world. Competing through pregnancy and rapidly returning to the sport after giving birth, she’s part of a movement redefining what’s possible for athlete-parents. Her continued success is a powerful reminder that it’s possible to excel at the highest level while embracing motherhood.
Sport’s Background: From Pool to Podium to Champion
Lauren started soccer at 4 years old, and swimming at 9. Whilst Lauren loved the team environment soccer provided, it was swimming that she took the furthest and credits for her huge lung capacity and aerobic base.
Outside the pool, Lauren found joy in running. She says that between her mid-teens and early thirties, she was logging hours of long, easy miles, week after week. No stopwatch, no structured programs; just a passion for being active outdoors.
It was whilst working as an ocean lifeguard that Lauren’s natural competitiveness was met. The Life Saving Federations in the USA ran regular competitions that would see Lauren and her lifeguarding teammates running, swimming, and racing on rescue boards. Around this same time, Lauren was exposed to CrossFit. Members of her all-male lifeguard team would regularly do CrossFit workouts, but Lauren was too shy to ask to join in. It wasn’t until she moved states that she found the time and courage to take herself to a CrossFit gym.
Within two years, Lauren was on the competition floor at CrossFit Regionals – a feat she repeated in 2016, 2017, 2018, and again in 2021. She excelled in the Teams division and though she had the engine to hang with the best, she admits her strength relative to the field would probably have held her back from ever making the CrossFit Games as an individual.
Before It Was Cool: From CrossFit to HYROX
Lauren’s journey from CrossFit to HYROX wasn’t direct. First came obstacle course racing and DEKAFIT, before impressive results at both saw her receive an invitation to the Spartan Games, which she won. She called OCR “a new adventure,” and it was during this time that she worked with coach Yancy Culp, who would play a pivotal role in guiding her to DEKAFIT success and later finding HYROX.
Fun fact: although Lauren no longer has CrossFit Games ambitions, she continues to take part in the CrossFit Open and has remained within the top 0.3% of all competitors the past few years. She continues to hold the DekaFit World Record and in 2024 won the DekaFit World Championship by a significant margin.
Lauren Week’s HYROX Career: The Greatest of All Time
Lauren did her first HYROX in Miami in 2019. It was Yancy, founder of DekaFit, that told Lauren she should give it a go because he felt she’d be good at it. Lauren’s time in 2019 was 1:11:50. Although that’s over 15 minutes off her World Record time in 2025, it was enough to land her a second place in the Women’s Pro division for that event.
From that point, Lauren’s rise was rapid. She followed up with a 3rd-place finish in her next race, then went on a tear – winning three of her next four events. In 2021, she took her first World Championship title with a time of 1:03:43, marking the beginning of an era.
But it wasn’t always easy. In those early races, Lauren was crushing the stations but struggling to keep up with elite runners like OCR star Faye Stenning. In that 2019 Miami race, Faye ran a blistering 30:29 across the 8km – Lauren’s run splits were over five minutes slower. Instead of being discouraged, Lauren got to work.
From 2019 to 2025, Lauren shaved nearly 8 and a half minutes off her total run time – a staggering improvement. Today, her running splits rival those of NCAA standouts like Megan Jacoby. That, combined with her CrossFit engine and more than 30 HYROX races’ worth of experience, has kept her at the top of the sport since 2021.
Race Strategy: Running on the Red Line
In our interview on the Rox Lyfe podcast, Lauren said, “I’ve never not gone out hot,” and “I don’t know if I’m ever going to try going out slow.”
Lauren’s race strategy is to set a relentless early pace and dare the rest of the field to match it. She doesn’t hold back on the runs, but carefully manages her energy on the stations. Her ability to sustain near-threshold efforts for almost an hour is unmatched and often what breaks her competitors.
Other than her World Championship race whilst she was 8 months pregnant, Lauren has finished on the podium for every HYROX she has entered. She has held World Records for longer than any other woman and won more World titles, more Majors and more Regional Championships than any other HYROX athlete in history too.
Lauren’s Training Philosophy: Consistency & Volume over Intensity
Lauren is a Level 2 CrossFit coach and her husband and coach, Anthony Peressini, is a Level 3. They are strong believers in the CrossFit methodology and much of their training resembles this.
Lauren will train for 20+ hours training per week, which is higher than most in the Elite 15. She also says she rarely takes a day off. However, Lauren points out that most people would be surprised by how much of her training is low intensity, “I see people working super, super hard all the time. I take the majority of my sessions easier than most.” She says maybe 5% of her training could be classed as ‘very high intensity’ and explains that this helps get in more volume as she’s rarely stressed or scared about a workout, so nothing gets put off.
Most days, Lauren’s training will include 1-2 Aerobic pieces, 1-2 Strength pieces and a GPP piece (General Physical Preparedness, such as a CrossFit style MetCon).
A big part of Lauren’s training is improving strength and efficiency of movement patterns and increasing general physical preparedness – rather than working specifically on HYROX specific exercises. For example, Lauren will regularly do burpees, burpee box jumps, devil presses, etc rather than just burpee broad jumps. She will do squats, presses, thrusters, goblet squats, etc rather than just wall balls. For her strength work, she’ll rarely touch her 1 rep max, but she’ll often do heavy sets of three for Olympic and Powerlifting movements to build and maintain her strength.
In terms of running, Lauren says that from 16 years old until 32 almost all her running outside of workouts was very easy Zone 1 or Zone 2. However, her husband and coach, Anthony, encouraged her to try threshold training before HYROX Manchester in 2023. The results were so noticeable for Lauren, that it’s become one of the main methodologies being used by Elite HYROX athletes today. This is where you will run for a short distance at a speed you can hold for around an hour, take a short rest, and repeat these intervals many times. An example session would be 7 * 5 minutes with 60 seconds of rest. The goal is to build up large amounts of time near your threshold to teach your body to get efficient at clearing lactic acid in a way that is recoverable and repeatable multiple times a week.
By the Numbers: Lauren’s Pace & Power
Running PR Stats
Mile: 5:17 Mile
10km: 36:55
Half-Marathon: 1:22:23
Strength PR Stats
Clean & Jerk: 97.5kg (215lbs)
Snatch: 75kg (165lbs)
Squat: 129.5kg (285lbs)
Bench Press: 70.5kg (155lbs)
Deadlift: 154.5kg (340lbs)
Lauren’s Personality: Community over Self
Lauren has profound respect for her fellow athletes – especially the women pushing the pace at the top of the sport. She has spoken openly about how much she appreciates strong women competitors like Megan Jacoby and Joanna Wietrzyk who continue forcing her to level up.
While Lauren is fiercely competitive, she’s equally committed to building community within the sport. In some Elite 15 races, as many as six athletes on the start line have trained under her and Anthony’s guidance as part of their coaching group, The Hybrid Engine. When asked why she’s so open about her training methods, Lauren simply says her biggest edge is experience and that helping other women reach their peak will leave a greater legacy than any individual win ever could.
Away from HYROX: Scrubs, Strollers & Mountains
Away from training, Lauren loves spending time with Anthony and their daughter Lily. She says that one of her favourite things to do is hike with them into the mountains.
Lauren qualified as a Registered Nurse and the plan was for her to take 6 months off after having her daughter before starting work in the field. However, before that could happen, HYROX’s popularity exploded, and Lauren hasn’t ended up using her qualification.
In terms of the future, Lauren intends to stay around in HYROX for as long as she stays competitive. She is also interested in transitioning into competing in longer events as she gets older, such as Triathlon and Marathons. She says she will chase whatever sport she can be competitive in and expects that to be longer endurance-based tests.
Lauren isn’t just part of HYROX history – she is the standard. The benchmark. The one everyone else is chasing.
You can watch / listen to our Rox Lyfe podcast conversation with Lauren below…
