Hyrox: The race people pay to suffer
Hyrox is the latest global fitness craze that has people willingly signing up to run eight kilometers and squeeze in eight brutal workout stations in between. It’s like someone blended a bootcamp class, a 10K race, and a midlife crisis into one very sweaty smoothie. One kilometer run, then a station—sled push, sled pull, SkiErg, rower, burpee broad jumps, farmer’s carry, sandbag lunges, wall balls—repeated eight times until your soul exits your body politely.
And while I haven’t been to a Hyrox event myself, I’m pretty sure I’ve lived several through my phone. My feed is overrun with Hyrox clips, from my former cancer doctor to countless celebrities lunging and sled-pushing either shirtless or in coordinated athleisure, as if this were the natural state of famous people. I have now seen so many slow-motion wall balls that my algorithm assumes I’m training for the Hunger Games. TikTok seems convinced I’m one burpee away from enlistment.
Why is everyone going feral over Hyrox? Because it’s the perfect hybrid-athlete fantasy: difficult enough to earn bragging rights, accessible enough that regular gym-goers can train for it without needing a gymnastics background or a CrossFit dictionary. No handstands. No snatches. Just honest, universal suffering. And because the format is identical anywhere in the world, your time in Singapore or Seoul is the same race as someone else’s in Amsterdam or Melbourne. It scratches that modern itch for structure—the same one that makes adults color-code their spreadsheets like it’s a personality trait. Hyrox says: Here is a predictable challenge; go forth and measure yourself against it.
The vibe helps, too. Hyrox events feel like fitness concerts: lights blazing, music thumping, spectators screaming as if pushing a sled were a heroic act. (To be fair, by station three it is heroic.) The whole thing photographs suspiciously well, which is surely why half the crowd looks camera-ready even while visibly wheezing. Hyrox understands the current moment: If you’re going to suffer, you might as well look epic doing it, preferably in matching spandex.
And just when the hype felt like it had peaked, Hyrox Seoul happened. Enter the celebrities, flocking to Hyrox like it’s the Met Gala of functional fitness. Anne Curtis and Erwan Heussaff turned up in Seoul with their equally iconic circle of friends—the competitive duo of Solenn Heussaff and Isabelle Daza, and their equally game husbands, Nico Bolzico and Adrien Semblat, who paired up for the Pro division (their second time competing together after Hong Kong)—all lunging, sled-pushing, and wall-balling in what looked like a group fitness honeymoon.
At a recent lunch, Anne told our curious lot that she did it “for love,” going in with little training, which is objectively the most romantic justification for voluntary suffering. She also clarified, sensibly, that a marathon is still harder. Only Anne could deliver affection and accuracy in the same breath while holding a sandbag.
In a video of their finish-line moment, Belle summed the whole experience up with a laugh: “There’s nothing like doing a race with someone as competitive as you.” Her teammate Solenn offered the kind of wisdom only someone fresh off an 80-meter burpee broad jump can deliver: “Our biggest takeaway: Come prepared. And be ready to endure pain. Hyrox is no joke. But doing it together made every crazy moment work.” Honestly, that might be the best unofficial Hyrox slogan yet.
Then Hyrox Singapore rolled around, and TikTok erupted. SHINee’s Minho—the idol famous for being aggressively fit—was seen competing on the Hyrox floor, not just waving at fans. Fans caught him mid-race looking improbably composed while everyone around him wilted like overused gym equipment. Minho’s teammate, Physical: 100 season 2 runner-up Hong Byeom-seok, and Physical: 100 stars Amotti and Choi Seung-yeon were also out there lunging and sprinting, confirming that nothing bonds reality-show warriors like synchronized cardiovascular trauma. No wonder my feed thinks Hyrox is the only sporting event that matters.
But strip away the star power and you’re left with the real engine behind Hyrox’s rise: a sport built for this extremely structured, self-optimized era. Hyrox appeals because it’s cleanly structured, measurable, and endlessly repeatable. You know exactly what the race will be every single time. You can train specifically for it. You can shave off minutes or seconds, then spend weeks obsessing about how to shave off more. It satisfies the modern appetite for self-improvement with receipts. Racers now collect Hyrox finisher patches the way marathoners collect medals at the majors, as if pain comes with its own loyalty program.
Signing up for Hyrox is comically straightforward for something that can ruin your quads for days. You pick a city, choose Open or Pro or Doubles (couples therapy disguised as sport), pay the fee—around US$130-160—and boom, you’re in. Training usually involves running intervals and functional circuits that make gym bystanders wonder if they should notify someone. You don’t need to be an athlete—just someone willing to negotiate with your hamstrings.
And that’s why Hyrox is exploding: It democratizes athletic ambition. It lets ordinary people feel extraordinary for a day, and lets extraordinary people feel like they’ve joined the rest of us in the furnace. It offers shared suffering, clear metrics, a finish-line patch, and a photo where you look simultaneously victorious and near death—the perfect modern trophy.
And because fitness trends travel faster than gossip, Hyrox Philippines is reportedly on the way—and local gyms have already begun offering Hyrox-style classes for anyone who wants to suffer preemptively.
Celebrities do Hyrox because it’s a tough, trainable challenge. Regular people do it for the same reason. And somewhere in that overlap is the real magic: a sport where everyone—famous, anonymous, shredded, or simply determined—ends up humbled by the same 75 wall balls. Nothing unites people like mutual regret.
