What's With the Hybrid Hype?

It’s been a couple years since its inception as a fitness phenomenon. By now, “hybrid training” (and its branded fitness competition Hyrox) has sufficiently filtered its way into the cultural lexicon. Fitness clubs everywhere have affiliated themselves with Hyrox-style classes and your Instagram feed is saturated with shirtless jacked guys running, pushing sleds, and throwing wall-balls. As many have been quick to point out, there’s a lot of whiplash and sarcasm which semi-justifiably sees this as a cross-fit rebrand. So what’s the hype about?

Founded in Germany in the late 2010s, Hyrox cleverly positioned itself as an accessible fitness race for everybody. It tapped into what Crossfit did well for 20+ years—building community around fitness and competition—and merged it with the accelerated cultural affinity for running. It took two sticky trends and made a fitness brand hybrid (ya, sorry). 

By taking 8 fairly low-skill exercises and repeating them, Hyrox has an advantage over Crossfit because many classic Crossfit exercises (primarily olympic lifts) require considerably more skill and learning time. So, really, Hyrox is just a test of someone's metabolic fitness and tolerance for pain…

But what does “hybrid training” mean in fitness terms? It’s pretty straightforward, actually. If you’re not a sport/fitness specialist in one area, you’re hybrid training. Eliud Kipchoge is not hybrid training, he’s got one goal and that’s to be the best possible marathon runner. If you want to be a better runner and improve your cardiovascular endurance, and you also want to build a bit of muscle and gain some strength, well, you’re hybrid training.

Hybrid training is actually the healthiest, most effective way to train for most people. It means you can train to improve multiple fitness goals and improve in different areas. You’ll never be the best runner in the world if you’re also spending significant time trying to get strong. You also won’t ever have a muscled, sculpted physique if all you do is run. And, bottom line, your body doesn’t love doing one thing repetitively from an injury/wear-and-tear perspective. So, for longevity, it’s better to train in some “hybrid capacity.” This is why even specialists do some degree of strength training. What you won’t see is run specialists trying to train like bodybuilders or powerlifters. But this is basically for the same reason you won’t see pure runners spending time swimming.

So, for most of us, it’s just about figuring out what’s the best form of hybrid training for our goals. Whether it’s a Hyrox competition, building muscle, or being a better, more durable runner, it’s about the right program and effort. So despite the hype, hybrid training is just smart training.