HYROX Training Plan: How to Train for Your First Race
Eight runs, eight stations, and one long argument with your legs. Here is how to train for it, and how to shape the 16 weeks before HYROX Chicago in February.
Eight runs, eight stations, and one long argument with your legs. Here is how to train for it, and how to shape the 16 weeks before HYROX Chicago in February.
A HYROX training plan has to cover three things: running while tired, eight specific stations, and the ability to get from one to the other without falling apart. Most first-timers train the stations, undertrain the running, and then donate five minutes to the transitions. None of that is hard to fix, and you have room to fix it. HYROX Chicago is at Navy Pier from 11 to 15 February 2027, which puts today about 23 weeks out. That is a generous runway for a first race.
What follows is how we build it for members at our River North and Logan Square gyms, both of which hold every race station in-house. If you want the tour of the race itself rather than the training, that lives on our HYROX training page.
HYROX is eight 1km runs, each one followed immediately by a station, in the same order at every event on earth: 1,000m SkiErg, 50m sled push, 50m sled pull, 80m burpee broad jumps, 1,000m row, 200m farmers carry, 100m sandbag lunges, and 100 wall balls to finish.
Add up the running and you covered 8 kilometres. For most people in the Open division that is close to half the clock. Everyone remembers the sled afterwards. Almost nobody's finish time was decided by it.
The loads are fixed and identical worldwide, which is the part that catches people out. Open men push a 152kg sled, pull 103kg, carry two 24kg kettlebells for 200m, lunge 100m under a 20kg sandbag and throw 100 wall balls with a 6kg ball to a 3m target. Open women push 102kg, pull 78kg, carry two 16kg bells, lunge with 10kg and throw a 4kg ball to 2.7m. Nothing gets scaled down to you on race day, so the training has to bring you up to it.
Station work is entertaining. Running is not, particularly in a Chicago January. So people rehearse sleds twice a week, feel strong, and then discover on race day that running on fresh legs and running after 100 wall balls are two different sports. The industry term for the second one is compromised running, and it is the single highest-yield thing you can practise.
The other quiet time sink is the roxzone, the transition area between every station and the next run. The clock never stops in there. Standing at the end of the sled pull negotiating with yourself for 40 seconds, eight times over, is five minutes gone. Practise walking straight through it. That is a habit, not a fitness quality.
The week
One easy long run of 8 to 12km at a pace where you could hold a conversation. One interval session built on 1km repeats, since that is the actual race distance. One short easy run. If you run nothing else all week, run the 1km repeats.
Squat, hinge, press, pull, and carry something heavy. HYROX rewards the person who finds 100kg on a sled unremarkable, and general strength is what makes it unremarkable. Two sessions is enough. Our regular CrossFit classes and group fitness classes already cover this if you would rather not write your own.
This is the session that wins races. Alternate a run with a station and repeat it four or five times: 1km run, 1,000m row, 1km run, 100m lunges, and so on. You are teaching your legs to find a running gait 15 seconds after they stopped doing something else, which they will not do on their own.
The sled push is technique before it is strength. Low body angle, arms long, short choppy steps, and no stopping once it moves. On the pull, sit your weight back and pull hand over hand rather than yanking with your arms. Ten minutes of deliberate sled work a week beats an hour of grinding at it once a month, and both gyms have the turf and the sleds sitting there.
The farmers carry and the sled pull both fail at the hands long before they fail at the legs. Add a heavy carry to the end of a lifting day, or hang from a bar until it is unpleasant, twice a week. It costs four minutes and saves you a set of dropped kettlebells.
Counting back from a February race, a 16 week block starts in late October. Between now and then you are building a base, which mostly means running consistently and getting comfortable in the gym. Then:
Weeks 1 to 6, base. Volume goes up, intensity stays boring. Build the long run toward 12km. Learn every station's technique while you are fresh enough to learn anything.
Weeks 7 to 12, build. The compromised session gets longer and closer to race pace. Start stacking three or four run and station pairs back to back. This is the block that hurts.
Weeks 13 to 15, sharpen. Two full race simulations, at least ten days apart, in race order with real loads. Time them. The number tells you your pacing plan rather than your fitness.
Week 16, taper. Cut volume by roughly half, keep some intensity, stop lifting legs in the last five days. Arriving fresh beats any session you could squeeze in.
People arrive at this question expecting a fight. There isn't one. CrossFit asks for a wider skill set, including barbell technique and gymnastics, and gives you an engine plus the strength to make the stations feel light. HYROX asks for a narrower set of skills held together for 60 to 90 minutes, which is a much bigger test of pacing and of your running specifically.
In practice, members who come from CrossFit need to add running and almost nothing else. Members who come from running need a winter of getting strong. Nobody has to convert.
The practical problem with a HYROX training plan in this city is equipment. You need sleds on turf, a SkiErg, a rower, sandbags, farmers handles and wall balls, and most gyms have three of those six. River North is our official HYROX affiliate gym and Logan Square carries the full race setup, so all eight stations live in-house at both. You rehearse the race on the equipment you will meet at Navy Pier, at the same loads.
Both gyms run a weekly HYROX class built around the runs, the stations and the transitions between them. The programming track behind it is Mayhem Affiliate programming, written by one of the winningest teams in the sport. Members also get 24/7 access through the Wodify app, which is how most people fit the extra sled work in around a job. The class schedule shows when everything runs, and membership options start with a $99 intro month.
Two other things worth using while you build. Our physical therapy practice shares the River North building, which matters in a training block where the running volume climbs, and an InBody scan plus nutrition coaching gives you something better than guesswork about fuelling a 90 minute race. If you have never done a class here, your first one is free.
Quick answers
Sixteen weeks is the honest answer for a first race, assuming you already train two or three times a week. If you are starting from nothing, give yourself six months. The limiter is almost never strength, it is how much running your legs and connective tissue will tolerate, and that adapts on its own schedule.
Yes. The Open division is built for first-timers and the cutoffs are generous. You need to be able to run roughly 8 kilometres broken into 1km pieces, and you need to be able to move the fixed loads. Most people who train twice a week for four months finish comfortably.
Four to five. Three of those are running in some form, two are strength, and one session a week combines the two so you learn what running on tired legs feels like. Six days is possible for experienced athletes and usually counterproductive for everyone else.
It is harder in a different direction. CrossFit asks for a wider skill set, including barbell technique and gymnastics. HYROX asks for one skill set repeated for 60 to 90 minutes without a break, which is a bigger test of pacing and a much bigger test of your running. Neither is the easy one.
Chicago Strength trains HYROX at River North, 1030 N Larrabee St, and Logan Square, 2080 N Milwaukee Ave. Both gyms run a weekly HYROX class and hold all eight race stations in-house, including the sleds, SkiErgs, rowers, sandbags, farmers handles and wall balls. Your first class is free. Call 312-664-0130.
All eight stations, in-house
Come rehearse the race on the real equipment at River North or Logan Square. Bring a race on the calendar or just curiosity.
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