Lauren Weeks is an American HYROX athlete and three-time individual World Champion, winning the title in 2020, 2021 and 2023. She also famously finished ninth at the 2022 World Championships while 33 weeks pregnant, before returning to win the following year.
But the results only tell part of her story. How does she train to stay competitive at the top of HYROX? Why does she think many athletes push too hard in training? And what goes through her mind when a race starts to hurt?
Drawing on our Rox Lyfe podcast conversations with Lauren, this profile explores her sporting background, HYROX career, training with husband and coach Anthony Peressini, and life as an athlete and mother.
Lauren Weeks’ Sporting Background
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.
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 Weeks’ HYROX Career and World Titles
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 won her first HYROX World Championship in 2020, then defended her title in 2021 with a time of 1:03:43.
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. 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.
In 2025, Lauren set a Women’s Pro world record of 56:23 at the Glasgow Major after a race-long battle with Joanna Wietrzyk. She also set a Women’s Open world record of 55:38 in Washington DC.
At the 2025 World Championships in Chicago, she finished third in the Elite 15 Singles and won the inaugural Women’s Elite 15 Doubles world title alongside Lauren Griffith.
At the 2026 World Championships, Lauren finished fifth in the Elite 15 Singles and retained the Women’s Elite 15 Doubles world title, this time alongside Vivian Tafuto.
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 enjoys setting a fast pace, but she also wants to stay in a position where she can dictate the race. In our latest podcast conversation, she explained why keeping her SkiErg performance sharp matters: staying with the leaders early gives her the option to make a move, rather than spending the race responding to everyone else.
Her approach to discomfort is equally deliberate. When the race starts to hurt, she sees it as a moment to commit rather than back off.
“I don’t wanna walk away from the race disappointed in my effort.”
That mindset sits alongside confidence in her preparation. Lauren says she has felt pressure in other sports, but feels prepared when she reaches a HYROX start line. One of her first thoughts is excitement about how fast she’ll get to run.
How Does Lauren Weeks Train for HYROX?
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 typically trains for more than 20 hours per week. She also says she rarely takes a day off. However, she is clear that she doesn’t believe everyone should be doing that, and 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.
In our latest conversation, Lauren used burpee broad jumps to explain this approach. She highlighted power cleans, dumbbell snatches and box jumps as exercises that can help develop the power needed for the station. Her reasoning: jumping further can reduce the number of burpees needed to cover the distance, saving time on repeatedly getting down to the floor and back up.
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.
Lauren says that from age 16 to 32, almost all her running outside of workouts was very easy, in Zone 1 or Zone 2. Before HYROX Manchester in 2023, Anthony encouraged her to introduce threshold training. She noticed a clear difference and made it part of her training approach.
An example session is 7 × 5 minutes with 60 seconds of recovery between efforts, accumulating 35 minutes of controlled, challenging running. The aim is to build sustained running performance without turning every interval into an all-out effort.
Coaching with Anthony Peressini: The Hybrid Engine
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.
Lauren wants to keep racing HYROX for as long as she can remain competitive in the elite field, even if she is no longer challenging for podiums. Longer term, she says she may move towards trail and ultra-endurance racing (“My heart lies in the mountains.”)
She is already building towards that ambition through her running and time on trails. Rather than waiting until she leaves HYROX, she wants to lay the foundations now so that she isn’t starting from scratch when she makes the transition.
You can watch / listen to our Rox Lyfe podcast conversation with Lauren below…
