How to train for Hyrox at home (no sled, no SkiErg)

How to train for Hyrox at home comes down to one honest split: about half the race is running, and you can do all of that from your front door. The other half is eight stations, and you can train most of them with a backpack, a couple of weights and a wall. What you can't fully copy at home is a heavy sled. Plan around that and home training gets you most of the way to the start line.

This guide covers what the race demands, what you can substitute for each station, the equipment worth owning, the sessions that matter and a sample week. If you'd rather have a Hyrox plan that moves with your week and knows exactly what kit you own, that's what exrsz is built for.

How to train for Hyrox at home: what the race needs

The race is fixed: per the 26/27 singles rulebook, you run 1 km, complete one station, and repeat eight times. The stations are SkiErg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carry, sandbag lunges and wall balls. Any good plan, including a Hyrox training plan built for a garage, has to cover three things:

1. ›A running engine. In a simulated race with 11 recreational athletes, the runs took a median of 51.2 minutes and the stations 32.8 minutes (Brandt et al., 2025). The same study found faster finishers had a higher VO2 max and more endurance training volume.
2. ›Station strength and capacity. Enough leg strength for the sleds, enough grip for the carry, enough endurance for 100 m of lunges and 100 wall balls.
3. ›Running on tired legs. Every kilometer after the first starts straight after a station.

Home handles the first and third almost perfectly, and most of the second. The bigger picture of Hyrox training, including how many days and how hard, applies whether you train in a gym or a living room.

Where home training falls short

Be honest about the gap, because it's specific.

Maximal strength for the sleds. The sled push is 102 kg for Women Open and 152 kg for Men Open and Women Pro, including the sled, according to the rulebook. Light home weights can still build muscle: a meta-analysis found similar hypertrophy from low and high loads when sets were taken to failure, but gains in one-rep max strength were greater with heavy loads (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). The sleds are a strength problem, so heavy loading helps.

Feel for the real equipment. A sled on a race floor, a SkiErg and a race rower all have a feel you only learn by using them.

The fix isn't a gym membership you hate. It's a handful of sessions on real kit before race day: a drop-in at a gym with a sled, or a Hyrox training gym found through the official gym finder.

Home substitutes for every Hyrox station

The rule for every substitute: keep the movement pattern and the job, swap the equipment.

Notes that matter:

• ›Wall ball target heights are 2.70 m for women and 3.00 m for men under the rulebook. If you throw at home, mark the height properly and check your ceiling first.
• ›Lunges: the trailing knee touches the ground on every rep in the race. Train it the same way, on a surface that won't wreck your knees.

The sled push at home

The best home sled push alternative is a loaded box or stack of plates on a towel, pushed across a hard floor. It copies the low angle and the horizontal leg drive. Wall drives, where you lean into a wall at sled angle and drive your knees, drill the position with no load at all. Short, steep hill sprints with a loaded backpack train the grind with a high heart rate. Add split squats and step-ups for leg strength.

The SkiErg at home

Banded straight-arm pulldowns with a slight hip hinge train the pattern. They don't train 1,000 m of pacing, so let running, cycling or a rower carry the engine work, and try a real SkiErg a few times before race day.

The equipment worth owning

You don't need much. In rough order of value:

1. ›Running shoes and a measured route. A loop you know is 1 km, or a track nearby.
2. ›One or two heavy kettlebells or dumbbells. Carries, lunges, goblet squats, presses, rows.
3. ›A backpack you can load. Lunges, hill sprints, step-ups, stair climbs.
4. ›A resistance band and a rope. SkiErg pulldowns and sled pull drags.
5. ›A medicine ball and a wall, if you have the ceiling height.
6. ›A rower or air bike, only if the budget and the space allow. Nice, not essential.

Six items. Most of them are probably already in a closet.

The home Hyrox sessions that matter

Intervals (on the road or the track)

Running fitness is the biggest lever, and intervals raise the ceiling on it. Common examples in coaching practice: 5 x 1 km a little faster than goal race pace with full recovery, or 6 to 8 x 400 m. One session a week is enough for most people. Our guide to interval training for Hyrox covers how to mix pure running intervals with station intervals across a block.

If you also race longer events, interval sessions for longer races lean toward longer, more controlled reps. Having track workouts for marathon training explained is a topic of its own, but the short version is that the track is for precision, not for running everything faster.

Station circuits

Three to four rounds, at controlled effort:

• ›20 m box or plate push (towel on a hard floor)
• ›20 walking lunges with a loaded backpack
• ›15 thrusters or wall balls
• ›100 m farmers carry
• ›10 burpee broad jumps

New to this? Start lighter and with fewer rounds. A beginner Hyrox workout should leave you able to train again in two days, not limping.

Compromised running from your front door

This is the Hyrox-specific skill, and home is a great place to train it, because your station is next to your running route.

• ›4 rounds: one station substitute (box push, lunges, thrusters or burpee broad jumps), then run 1 km immediately.
• ›Run at goal race pace and aim to settle into it within the first few hundred meters.
• ›Rest 2 to 3 minutes between rounds.

Home simulations

Once or twice in a build, set up all eight stations as substitutes near your loop and run the whole thing in order, recording every split. The planning around when to do that, and what to change after, is in our guide to Hyrox simulation workouts. Partial simulations, half the race or all eight stations with shorter runs, give you most of the information for less recovery cost.

For more Hyrox-specific sessions that translate well to a garage, the general rule holds: a clear job, race-relevant movements, and a dose you can recover from.

A sample week of Hyrox training at home

Four to five days, with the hard sessions spread out. Adjust the easy days to your life; protect the spacing of the hard ones.

The heavy leg day sits well away from Saturday's compromised session, and nothing heavy for the legs lands the day before intervals. That's the same rule a gym-based plan follows.

Who can train for Hyrox at home

Almost anyone, at any level. To race, you need to be at least 16 on race day, per the singles rulebook. That's how old you have to be to do Hyrox, explained in one line, and it applies however you train.

The people who do best at home are the ones who take the running seriously and accept the one honest gap: book a few sessions on a real sled before race day.

How exrsz handles home training

exrsz builds a periodized plan from your goal, schedule, level and equipment, so if your home setup is a kettlebell, a backpack and a running loop, the plan uses exactly that. Running and station strength sit in one plan, it adapts each week to how you trained, and it reshuffles missed sessions.

FAQ

Can you train for Hyrox at home?

Yes, for most of it. Running, compromised running, carries, lunges, burpee broad jumps and wall ball substitutes all work at home. Try to get onto a real sled and SkiErg a few times before race day.

What equipment do I need to train for Hyrox at home?

Running shoes and a measured route, one or two heavy kettlebells or dumbbells, a loadable backpack, a band and a rope. A medicine ball and a rower are useful extras, not requirements.

How do I train the sled push without a sled?

Push a loaded box or plates on a towel across a hard floor, use wall drives for position, and add backpack hill sprints and split squats. Heavy loads build maximal strength better than light ones (Schoenfeld et al., 2017), so get some heavy work in when you can.

How many days a week should I train for Hyrox at home?

Four days is enough for a first race; five gives more room for running. Keep two or three hard days and make the rest easy, with heavy leg work away from interval days.

Is running more important than the stations for Hyrox?

Running is a big share of the race. In a simulated-race study the runs took longer than the stations combined, and faster finishers had higher VO2 max and more endurance training volume (Brandt et al., 2025). Train both, but don't skimp on the running.