Who is Christian Toetzke? Co-founder of HYROX functional fitness and endurance race

HYROX is an indoor global fitness race for everyday gym-goers to test their skills alongside pro athletes.

Marc Dean took home a first place trophy in the Pro Doubles category at this year's Hyrox World Championships, alongside his team mate Jake Dearden.

HYROX

Hyrox is race unlike any other.

This global indoor-event is a unique fitness race that combines running with functional work-outs throughout the circuit.

The idea is that participants complete a workout station each time they complete a one kilometer run, and this is repeated eight times.

Workout stations include diverse exercises such as:

• SkiErg — a fitness machine designed to simulate the motion of Nordic skiing
• Sled pushes and pulls — strength-based exercises performed using a weighted sled
• Rowing
• Burpee broad jumps — a challenging combination exercise combining a burpee with a forward jump
• Farmer's carries — walking while carrying heavy weights in each hand
• Sandbag lunges — carrying a weighted sandbag while performing alternating lunges
• Wall balls — combination of a squat with throwing a weighted medicine ball against a wall above head-height

Hyrox races are held in cities all over the world throughout the year and are designed in a way that's accessible for all, regardless of fitness level.

• Open: For fitness enthusiasts and first-time racers
• Pro: For experienced athletes with heavier weights
• Doubles: Team-based format
• Relay: Team members split the race

The brand currently draws almost 200,000 fitness enthusiasts from around the world to jump on board to compete in an attempt to test their endurance levels - Hyrox style.

The boss

Christian Toetzke is the co-founder and CEO of Hyrox, which he refers to as the "marathon of fitness."

He created Hyrox in 2017 after being inspired to create a race for gym-goers to compete against each other.

Since staging his first fitness race in 2018, the Germany based business has grown into a widely acknowledged world-wide brand.

Speaking to Athletech News Christian explains what inspired him to create Hyrox: "I left the corporate world and started to develop the idea for a fitness event based on my background in mass-participation endurance events.

"I've always loved the basic idea that you create something like a marathon event where you bring the best athletes in the world together with very average people who the same thing, n the same course, on the same day.

"I thought there was a big gap in the market - you see around two hundred million people going into gyms everyday, but there was no competition that was really based on what most of the people are doing in the gym.

"Drawing from my time staging all sorts of mass-participation events, I put everything together , took the best out of every concept and created something new."

A win for Brits

The London capital hosts one of the worlds most popular Hyrox events.

The event of 2023 saw more than 12,500 athletes participate over the three day event.

In 2024, the competition took place at the London Excel enabling even more athletes to take part.

Hyrox London took place from November 29 to December 1.

Earlier in the year Hyrox saw the fitness trailblazer, Jake Dearden win the 2024 Pro Doubles Men for Britain in the Hyrox World Championships.

Speaking after his Pro Doubles HYROX World Championship win on June 9, 2024, in Nice, France, Jake said: "The race itself was tight and to come out on top was unbelievable.

"It's a privilege, but it shows that all the hard work has paid off over the last couple of months and years.

"I'm over the moon and joining the Red Bull family of athletes this week has made it even better — it’s been a week of dreams."