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I recently competed in the Fitness First Hyrox Frankfurt 2025 in the women’s open doubles. Let’s have a recap including what I learned from it, what I'd recommend if you are looking to do a Hyrox or your first Hyrox race, and what I'd like to do moving forward.
For some context, the friend that I did Hyrox with is located on the other side of the world. We do not live in the same country and we just use telepathy in order to train together. Just kidding! We trained for Hyrox separately and together at the same time. My friend has been training Hyrox-style for a couple years now, as it’s a bit more popular in her country. Whereas in the US, Hyrox is picking up steam, but it's not yet quite as big as it is in other areas of the world. For example, when I was looking for Hyrox gyms in my area, they were fairly slim pickings. Fortunately, I found a gym that offered an excellent Hyrox class including mini simulations of Hyrox, so I began attending the class once per week alongside my strength training and running training.
For additional background on my fitness experience, I've been training myself for 15 years and I've been a personal trainer for over 8 years now. So I have some background and some fitness that has been built over several years of experience. Alongside my regular lifting and running regime, I completed a trail half marathon in the late summer a few months before the Hyrox race. All that considered, I was feeling very confident in my running experience before doing Hyrox. For more context on how I trained, watch my How I’m Training for my First Hyrox YouTube video.
Leading up to the race, I arrived in Germany a week in advance. This was helpful to have a whole week to acclimate to the new time zone and train with my doubles partner to make sure that we're all on the same page with the transitions. For a timeline: I landed Friday, we trained and practiced transitions on Saturday, I traveled to Munich on Sunday, lifted on Monday, ran on Tuesday and returned to Frankfurt on Tuesday, rested Wednesday, ran Thursday, and raced Friday.
The Hyrox race itself was incredible. Honestly, going into the race, I was thinking, "Yeah, this will be hard and it’s definitely a different type of training than what I've trained for in the past." But it was such a motivating and energetic environment. The energy was pumping, the music was bumping, and it was really amazing to see people from all over the world go and compete and do something hard. And it’s not just a few hundred or a few thousand people competing. It’s tens of thousands of people of all ages, all fitness levels, all body types, all genders, and all athletic abilities.
I felt good and trained going into the 1K runs. The stations were challenging and fun all at the same time. I felt that doing the race in the open doubles division helped me as a first timer. I will say that going into the race, I thought “I'll probably be a one and done sort of thing”. I knew it was going to be hard since it’s a different type of training for me, but honestly, afterwards, I felt really inspired and thought, “I could definitely do this again”.
After having such an incredible experience, completing the race, seeing what my strengths were, seeing what my weaknesses were, how me and the friend that I did this with could improve next time, I really just don't see why I wouldn't sign up again. Of course, I am going to take an off season to continue to build my strength, endurance, and power, but if you are looking to get into Hyrox or you're curious about what Hyrox is, I recommend looking into it.
Find a Hyrox race that is going to be in your city or a nearby city where you can go have a weekend, do something hard, but also have fun while doing it. Ultimately, if you're wanting to dabble in it or try it out for your first time, I felt like doing the open doubles or duos was really helpful because again, we were able to show our strengths, but also feed off of each other for motivation, communicate how we need to shift in order to do well or do what we are expecting of ourselves. So, I would say start with the open doubles, see if you like it, and then go from there.
As for the training side of it, I would recommend taking some time to build your fitness for this, especially if this is completely new. If you are new to fitness in general, I would take several months in order to build up your fitness. Yes, could you do it tomorrow, but just because you could do something doesn't mean you should. So, I would still recommend building your fitness just as it is for any other goal. Take 6 to 12 months or more to build up your fitness and then sign up for the race. Once you've built your fitness, I would give yourself some specific Hyrox training of about 12 weeks to take your fitness to the next level, get really specific with the Hyrox moves, practice your transitions with your partner if you are doing doubles, and understand a little bit more about how to pace yourself – because running separately from Hyrox conditioning are two different things until you pair them together.
I am a coach who believes that you don't need to do a full simulation of Hyrox, or really any type of race, before you actually do the race. So although you're going to be training to run an 8K (and likely a little bit more because of having to be in the rock zone), you don't necessarily need to run an 8K in order to be able to do that on race day. Similarly to how if someone came to me to run a 10K as their first 10K, I'm not going to require them to run a 10K before they actually do the race. You can have that be a part of your training depending on your fitness level, but if it's your first time and you've never ran that before, you can absolutely save that for race day. And that's just my approach. With that said, I suggest spending some time running throughout the week, thinking about three sessions per week, getting strength training in at least two times a week, and then having a day of Hyrox-esque conditioning, especially as you get closer to the race.
Ultimately this is my takeaway from doing Hyrox in December 2025 and doing it for the first time. If you're thinking about racing for your first time, go check it out and give it a whirl! They have races all over the world, so you really can't miss it. Go do some hard things!
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