What this first HYROX physiology study can tell you
Eleven recreational HYROX athletes completed a simulated Individual Open race while researchers tracked heart rate, blood lactate and perceived exertion. Running occupied more time than the stations, most of the effort was performed at hard or very hard intensity, and faster overall times were associated with higher aerobic capacity, more endurance training and lower body-fat percentage.
The practical signal is to train HYROX as an endurance event interrupted by stations: build sustainable running, practise returning to pace after each station and rehearse the late wall-ball effort under controlled fatigue. The study does not show that maximum strength is irrelevant, nor does a correlation prove that changing one measured trait will produce a particular finish-time gain.
The sample was small, recreational and tested in a simulation rather than an official race. Read the methods and results in the PubMed record before applying its findings to another division, sex or experience level.