Get On The Hyrox Races Hype

The world's fastest-growing fitness sport is coming to India next year. We sat down with Deepak Raj, the man responsible for bringing Hyrox races to India, to understand the frenzy behind this latest sensation

- Ravi Raj

Innovation is everywhere, but strangely, exercise is the last place where you'll hear this buzzword. What's there to innovate in, say, running, or swimming? Imagine a startup dudebro coming up with a big-brain idea to make you run miles without leaving your bed. That's closer to quackery than innovation. But what's not quackery is Hyrox Races, a unique fitness movement that has an entire Europe in its sway. Devised in 2017 by Christian Toetzke, a veteran in organising international races, and Moritz Furste, an Olympic medallist in field hockey, Hyrox has become one of the largest fitness movements in the world, boasting more than 2 lakh participants in over 25 countries so far. It's a hybrid fitness routine that combines running with eight functional exercises. A good mix of cardio with strength exercises can never go wrong. You run for a kilometre, then stop at one of the eight workout stations carefully designed, and run again

It's now spreading its tentacles far and wide from Europe. On October 17, India became the seventh nation in the Asia Pacific region to join the Hyrox bandwagon, after the race was launched in partnership with Yoska, a fitness company that also brought Ironman 70.3 to India.