You don't need a sled. You need a driveway.
Twelve weeks to a HYROX start line on running shoes, one pair of dumbbells and a loaded backpack. About five hours a week. Thirty pages, free.
Send me the plan.You read the station list and stopped at the sled.
152 kilograms, sled included, pushed across race turf. You don't own that, you're not going to own that, and there is no honest garage substitute for it. Anybody selling you a conversion number invented it.
So you closed the tab, on a number nobody ever showed you.
The two stations you can't own are the two that separate the field least.
Spread is the gap between the fastest tenth of the field and the slowest tenth at one station. It measures how much that station sorts people out.
| Station | Spread, men | Spread, women | Can you own it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wall balls | 6:28 | 6:00 | Yes. A wall |
| Burpee broad jumps | 4:38 | 5:38 | Yes. A floor |
| Sled pull | 3:53 | 4:07 | No |
| Sled push | 2:19 | 2:14 | No |
| Row | 1:12 | 1:22 | No |
| SkiErg | 0:57 | 1:12 | No |
Read the bottom two rows again. The widest gap in the sport is a wall ball, the second widest is a burpee, and three of the four widest need nothing but a floor, a wall and a pair of dumbbells.
HYROX's own Sports Science Report, reading more than 14,000 Male Open performances, found wall balls the most variable station of all and called the SkiErg and row the most consistent.
The sled is one afternoon, not a membership.
Touch a real sled at least once before race day, and touch it tired. A drop-in at a HYROX-style gym usually runs somewhere around 25 to 45 dollars. Phone ahead and ask for the sled and the turf by name. HYROX affiliation carries no mandatory equipment requirement, so a gym on the affiliate list doesn't promise you either one.
Every session is written twice.
GARAGE assumes exactly that list, plus a wall or a hill. GYM assumes the real stations. Neither column is the lesser one. Each carries the loads, the paces, the movement standards, a log, and a fifteen minute version of every session for the morning after a bad night.
Every figure in the book was rated before it was printed. Seventy four failed. Three of the failures are the numbers this category repeats most: how many real sled sessions a first timer needs, how far the Roxzone actually is, and what a wall ball converts to in dumbbell thrusters. Nobody has measured any of the three. What survived is printed with its sample size and where it came from.
No date is printed anywhere in the book, so it works for the race you pick this year and the one you pick in three.
From Tony
I've been coaching since 2012, and I built this around the problem I actually have: a start line I want to cross, a garage, a job, and whatever hour the house gives me. I went looking for what the sleds really cost a guy who trains at home, half expecting to talk myself out of racing. Most of what is written about this race is confident and unsourced, and a lot of it is somebody's guess in a good suit. The numbers said the opposite, so I pointed the week I already run at a race instead of buying a membership I'd use twice.
Send it to the dad who keeps saying he would do one of these if he had a gym. Then reply and tell me the date you picked. I read every one.
HYROX Anaheim, December 3 to 6
That is the one I am pointing at.
Yours works the same way: find your race, count back twelve weeks, and Week 1 is the Monday you begin.
Free, and it stays free.
The book now, and a letter most Sundays. Say the word any time and you're out the same day.
It all counts.