When Christian Toetzke founded Hyrox back in 2017, he sought to create the “marathon of fitness,” a series of mass-participation events that would bring gym-goers together in the same way marathons and triathlons attract endurance athletes from across the globe.
Eight years later, Hyrox is well on its way to making Toetzke’s dream a reality. The brand currently stages competitive fitness races in countries around the world as its popularity surges (online searches for the term “Hyrox” have increased 233% year-on-year, outpacing just about any fitness trend, while attendance numbers have grown 100% per year with over 600,000 athletes set to participate in Hyrox this season).
“We’re realizing that fitness is truly universal,” Douglas Gremmen, Hyrox’s chief operations officer, tells Athletech News “The language of fitness is probably one of the only sports that resonates in every country of the world: the way Americans consume fitness is similar to how the Chinese perceive fitness.”
In a Hyrox race, participants run a one-kilometer lap, followed by a functional exercise station like sled pushes, SkiErgs or kettlebell farmers carries, repeated eight times. Races are run for time, and the format stays the same across the globe, allowing participants to compete in global leaderboards and, if they’re good enough, at the season-ending World Championships event.
This May, Hyrox will stage its second annual outdoor race in New York City, a follow-up to last year’s event that effectively marked the German brand’s arrival onto the American fitness scene and set the stage for global growth.
Ahead of this year’s New York race, Gremmen sat down with ATN to discuss the event, chronicle Hyrox’s rise to prominence and outline the brand’s goal to make fitness a worldwide sport.
Betting Big on the Big Apple
Hyrox has been popular in Europe since its founding, staging races in cities from London to Berlin. But the brand had some trouble gaining critical mass in the United States in its early years, challenges that were exacerbated by pandemic lockdowns.
That all changed eight months ago, when Hyrox took over New York City for a weekend in early June, transforming Manhattan’s Pier 76 on the Hudson River into a custom racing track. The two-day event marked Hyrox’s first-ever outdoor race (events are usually staged in indoor exhibition halls). It was also the brand’s most-attended event in the U.S. to date, drawing around 5,500 athletes.
“To get Americans to take notice, we had to take a massive risk,” Gremmen says, noting that Hyrox viewed NYC as the key to unlocking the wider American fitness market.
“Christian’s motto was, ‘Go big or go home,’” Gremmen adds. “I had the opposite vision in terms of the execution part, which was to go local, knock on gym doors, and instigate conversations with anybody meaningful in New York around the sport of fitness to start working on our grassroots awareness.”
Those grassroots efforts quickly paid off. Hyrox sold out the New York event ahead of time in March, gaining some timely mainstream media coverage from outlets like the New York Times in the process.
“That created a buzz and FOMO,” Gremmen recalls. “Celebrities started calling us saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t get a ticket.’ The media was starting to get involved and before we knew it, we not only had 5,000 athletes but the social impact it created during that weekend was massive. People from Lance Armstrong to the stars of Peloton and other notorious fitness influencers participated, completely organically.”
The exposure Hyrox gained from New York 2024 led to accelerated sales for upcoming races across America, including Chicago and Dallas.
“Before we knew it, we’d sold out every event in 2024 on the back of New York,” Gremmen says.
US, Global Expansion Plans
This spring, Hyrox will return to the Big Apple for F45 Hyrox New York, a three-day event to be held on the weekend of May 30 – June 1, again at Pier 76. Around 15,000 athletes are expected to attend this year’s race, which would set a new record as Hyrox’s biggest-ever event in America.
“I want 15,000 people to have the best experience ever and convince five or six of their best friends to do it the year after,” Gremmen says of his hopes for the event, noting that based on current growth trends, Hyrox can foresee as many as 25,000 to 35,000 athletes participating in 2026 in New York.
Beyond New York, Hyrox aims to eventually stage 15 races per year in the 15 largest cities in America, and many more across the globe.
During the 2024-25 season, the brand will host races in places like Brisbane, Johannesburg and Shanghai. Demand is strong: Hyrox sold 5,000 tickets in one day for Hyrox Bangkok this May, and has done similar numbers in Mexico, Gremmen reports.
“We want to be in every major city in the world,” he adds. “If you look at the world map, that’s probably between 100 and 150 cities. If every event has at least 10,000 – numbers we’re already at now – we’re talking about 1.5 million people participating (in Hyrox). If we can get to 25,000 to 35,000 people per event, we’re talking about a global movement of three to five million participants.”
Blue-Chip Brands Take Notice
Hyrox isn’t just an events company, though. Through Hyrox365, the brand delivers digital fitness content, training and education resources to gyms around the world, enabling them to train their members for Hyrox events.
More than 5,000 affiliate gyms are signed up as Hyrox Training Clubs, from mom-and-pop fitness studios to large chains like F45 Training. In the U.S. alone, there are around 1,200 Hyrox-affiliated gyms.
The end goal, according to Gremmen, is to make Hyrox classes a staple in gyms around the world.
“We believe the sport of Hyrox can be trained inside every fitness facility around the world in the same way you go to yoga or HIIT class,” he says.
Hyrox isn’t hurting on the sponsorships side, either. Last year, the brand signed Chris Hemsworth’s Centr as its official race-day equipment supplier. It also signed sportswear giant Puma as its official apparel and footwear partner for all races from 2024 to 2027. Puma now sells Hyrox-branded gear along with a special Hyrox-themed edition of its Deviate Nitro 3 running shoe. The fitness race also counts energy drink giant Red Bull as one of its sponsors.
“I think we’re a bridge to the (entire) fitness community, which is why some of the bigger brands like Puma and Red Bull see Hyrox as a credible way to associate themselves with fitness more holistically rather than saying, ‘Pilates is my sport.’ or ‘CrossFit is my sport,’” Gremmen says.
While Hyrox has several irons in the fire, the brand assures it’s focused on keeping the main thing the main thing as it chases global growth.
“We’ve got to make sure our events business is the biggest driver of what we do,” Gremmen says. “We’ve got to keep impressing, innovating and delivering a best-in-class experience so that people are wowed every time they come.”
