HYROX training for weightlifters

HYROX® training for weightlifters should lead with running: the eight runs are 47% of the average Open men’s finish, and the top quarter of Open men is 4:43 ahead of the median on the runs but only 28 seconds ahead on the sled push. Keep two strength sessions a week, add at least three runs with one of them straight off a station, and never put a quality run the day after heavy legs.

This guide is for the athlete who squats and deadlifts well and has watched the runs fall apart in the second half of a race. It uses 702,095 public HYROX results from the 2025/26 season to show where that time goes, then sets out what to keep from lifting, what to add, and how one week holds both.

Where do strong athletes lose HYROX time?

Start with the spread. The table gives every part of the race its median and the gap from there to the top quarter of the field. A big gap marks a part where athletes differ a lot, so training moves you a long way; a small gap marks a part where nearly everyone takes about the same time.

Part	Median	Top 25%	Gap
All eight runs	41:35	36:52	4:43
SkiErg	4:35	4:22	0:13
Sled push	3:07	2:39	0:28
Sled pull	4:59	4:13	0:46
Burpee broad jumps	5:36	4:35	1:01
Row	4:53	4:37	0:16
Farmers carry	2:11	1:52	0:19
Sandbag lunges	5:20	4:28	0:52
Wall balls	7:11	5:48	1:23
Roxzone	7:27	5:56	1:31

HYROX season 2025/26: 174,215 results with all 16 splits (roxzone: 169,045). Each part’s own median and 25th percentile. The gaps do not add up to a finish: the fastest quarter on one station is not the same athletes as on the next.

Open women: every part of the race

Part	Median	Top 25%	Gap
All eight runs	46:45	41:41	5:04
SkiErg	5:18	5:02	0:16
Sled push	2:56	2:31	0:25
Sled pull	5:48	4:56	0:52
Burpee broad jumps	6:45	5:33	1:12
Row	5:32	5:13	0:19
Farmers carry	2:19	2:02	0:17
Sandbag lunges	5:13	4:25	0:48
Wall balls	6:51	5:37	1:14
Roxzone	8:05	6:33	1:32

HYROX season 2025/26: 98,478 results with all 16 splits (roxzone: 93,790). Each part’s own median and 25th percentile. The gaps do not add up to a finish: the fastest quarter on one station is not the same athletes as on the next.

For a lifter, that table is the whole argument. The stations that look most like the gym barely separate the field: 28 seconds between the median and the top quarter of Open men on the sled push, 19 on the farmers carry. The same two levels are 4:43 apart on the runs and 91 seconds apart in the roxzone. The stations with big gaps, wall balls (83 seconds), burpee broad jumps (61) and sandbag lunges (52), are high-repetition leg work on tired legs, not tests of a one-rep max. Women’s numbers tell the same story: 25 seconds on the sled push, 5:04 on the runs.

What does strong but slow look like in a race?

Pro is the division built for strength: Pro men push 202 kg (445 lb) instead of the Open 152 kg (335 lb) and pull 153 kg (337 lb) instead of 103 kg (227 lb), both weights including the sled. Compare the men who finished in the same five minutes, 80:00–84:59, in each division (21,690 Open and 4,241 Pro results). The Pro men spent 1:03 longer on the sled push and 1:23 longer on the sled pull, and finished in the same time anyway, because they ran their eight kilometres 1:59 faster. Even in the division made for strong athletes, the finish is decided on the runs. The HYROX weights guide has the comparison for every station, for men and women.

What slows in the second half of a HYROX?

The athletes who finish later lose most of their time late. Between the Open men who finished in 80:00–84:59 and those who finished in 100:00–104:59, 9:47 of the 19:53 between them came in the second half of the race (the last four runs, with the row, farmers carry, lunges and wall balls), against 7:37 in the first half and 2:31 in the roxzone.

The last run shows it most plainly. Run 8 comes straight after 100 m of sandbag lunges, with the wall balls still to come. The table sets it against run 7, which follows the farmers carry, at each finish time.

Finish	Men (n)	Run 8	Women (n)	Run 8
1:05–1:10	10,525	+0:23	1,266	+0:20
1:15–1:20	20,936	+0:30	7,159	+0:24
1:25–1:30	20,937	+0:40	12,135	+0:31
1:35–1:40	14,116	+0:57	10,828	+0:42
1:45–1:50	8,708	+1:21	7,374	+0:56
1:55–2:00	5,054	+1:52	4,469	+1:13
2:05–2:10	2,807	+2:24	2,572	+1:38

HYROX season 2025/26: average run 7 and run 8 of the Open finishers in each five-minute bracket; the count columns give the results behind each row. Run 7 follows the farmers carry, run 8 the sandbag lunges.

For men finishing in 1:05–1:10, run 8 took 23 seconds longer than run 7; for men finishing in 2:05–2:10, it took 2:24 longer. That fade is not a strength problem. It is what tired legs do to running, and it is trained by running on tired legs.

What is compromised running, and why does it matter for lifters?

Compromised running is running on legs a station has just loaded, and every HYROX run after the first one is compromised. The splits show which stations cost the run after them most. For the median Open man, run 3, straight after the sled push, took 23 seconds longer than run 2, after the SkiErg; run 5, after the burpee broad jumps, was the slowest of runs 2 to 7, at 5:20; and run 8, after the lunges, was 41 seconds slower than run 7. The median Open woman shows the same pattern: her run 3 took 17 seconds longer than her run 2, and her run 8 took 40 seconds longer than her run 7.

A lifter’s legs can move the sled. What HYROX asks is what they can run afterwards, and that is its own fitness, trained by its own session: station work at race load, then 1 km at race pace, repeated, once a week, every week. Athletes describe the 8 km and the stations as manageable apart and a different race together; this is the session that puts them together. The pace real finishers held on every run, by finish time, is in the HYROX running pace chart.

What should a lifter keep from strength training?

• Two strength sessions a week, three at most. Of the athletes who got faster and said how often they lifted, seven in nine lifted two or three times a week and none more than three. You keep the lifting; you cap it.
• At three or four training days, lift on the compromised-run day, after the runs: a squat or a deadlift, kept moderate. That day is already hard, and the rest of the week stays free for running.
• From five days, strength gets a day of its own: a squat, a hinge and a press.
• Heavy legs never the day before a quality run. No compromised run, interval session or race rehearsal the day after squats, deadlifts, lunges or sleds.
• The barbell leaves in the last week. Lighter lifting through the taper, and nothing with a barbell in the six days before the race.

What should a lifter add?

• At least three runs a week. In 108,244 public posts and comments about HYROX, 1,153 named running as what limited the race; 9 named strength.
• One compromised run every week, as above.
• 1 km intervals, from four sessions a week: repeats at the race’s own distance, a little slower than your fresh 1 km pace, the speed a lifter’s week otherwise never touches.
• An easy long run: from 8 km, the race’s own running distance, growing to 75 minutes and never less than 12 km, at a pace you can talk at, 48 hours from any sled session.
• More running every week until the peak. The athletes who got faster and gave their volume ran 15 to 50 km a week.
• Your two weakest stations, four weeks at a time, and two race rehearsals: a full one eight weeks out, a half one three weeks out.

How does a lifter’s HYROX week fit together?

Five sessions keeps a full strength day: a compromised run, 1 km intervals, a strength day of a squat, a hinge and a press, a station day on your two weakest stations, and an easy long run. At four sessions the strength day folds into the compromised-run day, after the runs. What decides the order is what a lifter’s legs carry from one day to the next:

• No quality run after heavy legs. The intervals and the compromised run never fall the day after the strength day or the station day.
• Strength before stations, not before running. The day after the strength day can take station work; it cannot take a quality run.
• The sleds stay 48 hours from the long run, before it and after it.

Every load for every division, in kg and lb, is in the weights guide; the rules behind the week, with their evidence, are in how to train for HYROX. The week written out session by session, around your two stations and your race date, is the Plan in Rivo, on the iPhone and the Apple Watch, with a 14-day free trial.

Is running or a station holding you back?

Measure it rather than guess it. After a race, set your splits beside the averages of athletes who finished in the same five minutes as you, in the HYROX splits guide: wherever you are furthest behind is your answer. Before a race, Rivo’s free Number takes a 5 km time and your sled push and sled pull times and returns a predicted finish, the range it could land in, and what is costing you the most time, in seconds. Time the sleds at race weight rather than guess them: sled times follow bodyweight and the sled surface more than running speed, so a 5 km says little about them.

How these numbers were made

• Race data: 702,095 public HYROX results from 98 venues, season 2025/26, read with pyrox-client (an independent open-source client) and loaded 2 September 2026; only results with all 16 splits and a finish of 40 to 300 minutes.
• Medians and gaps are each part’s own percentiles across every Open finisher. Brackets are every finisher whose time fell in the same five minutes, and their averages add up to their average finish. Pro and Open athletes in the same bracket finished within seconds of each other on average.
• Nothing here describes one athlete: no group under 50 results is published.
• Training evidence: counts from 108,244 public Reddit posts and comments about HYROX (March 2025 to August 2026), and the athletes in them who reported a faster race and described their training week.