Go beast or go home

Gymming is no longer about cute mirror selfies. It’s become an extreme sport. Can you survive a marathon of burpees, lunges and sled pulls?

- Kritika Kapoor

Run for 1km. Ski Nordic-style for the next. Then, push a 100kg sled. Run some more. Row. Then, haul 30kg weights from A to B. Lunge with 10kg. Finally, throw a 5kg ball at a wall (and catch it) 100 times.

No, it's not a deleted scene from a Dwayne Johnson movie. It's Hyrox, a fitness competition that’s been storming through gyms. Think of it as the Dubai Chocolate of muscle-building. Hyrox (a mashup of “hybrid” and “rockstar”) seems a little masochistic. But as more and more people train like athletes these days, regular gymming has flexed upwards from Zumba to Pilates to CrossFit. More than 1,000 fans showed up for the Mumbai Hyrox debut in May.

“It’s cool, and kind of a social currency right now,” says Kunal Rajput, founder of Breathe Studio Mumbai. He participated in the May event, and prepared others for it too. “People admire those who do it because it is extremely hard to show up and train for something like this, and that validation feels good.”

Gymming has always been fitness’s middle child — overlooked, underhyped, in the shadow of its flashier siblings. Runners get marathons. Cyclists get cyclothons. Triathletes get, well, triathlons. Fitness races are hoping to turn gymming from a routine to a competitive sport.

Game on