How to Run a Hyrox-Style Fitness Race with FittestArena

Hyrox-style races are exploding in popularity, and a lot of the organizers running them are gym owners and affiliates who are new to managing a race-day format instead of a traditional CrossFit leaderboard. The good news: FittestArena already has everything you need to run one, you just need to set it up the right way.

Here's how to structure your event.

1. Set Up Your Divisions

Hyrox races are typically split by age group, gender, and sometimes pairs or relay teams. In FittestArena:

• Create an individual division for each age/gender category (e.g., "Open Men," "Masters 40-49 Women")
• Create a team division with a team size of 2 for doubles/relay formats
• Set a participant limit on each division if you're capping race heats

Tip: If you're running multiple age brackets, it's usually cleaner to create a separate division per bracket rather than trying to filter one big division later — your leaderboard will automatically split by division.

2. Build Your "Workout" as the Race

Hyrox is one continuous race, so it's set up as a single score workout: athletes cross the finish line and you enter one final time, rather than tracking splits per station.

• Scoring type: Time
• Scoring format: Single score
• Time format: hh:mm:ss, since most Hyrox finish times run past the 60-minute mark
• Ranking type: Lower is better (fastest total time wins)
• Mode: In-person, since Hyrox is a race-day format entered directly by organizers or judges, not something athletes submit remotely

If you want to track station splits internally for your own records, you can still do that outside the platform (stopwatch, spreadsheet, whatever your judges use), and just enter the final finish time into FittestArena.

3. Open Registration

Once your divisions are built:

• Share your event link so athletes can register and pay through Stripe, or add them manually if you're managing a waitlist by hand
• Use the participant limit per division to control heat sizes automatically. Once a division fills, registration closes for that division without any manual monitoring
• If you're taking sign-ups over multiple weeks, the countdown on the registration button keeps athletes aware of the deadline

4. Race Day Scoring

On race day:

• Enter each athlete's final finish time as they cross the line, or let your judges do it from their own dashboard access
• The leaderboard updates live as scores come in, division by division
• If someone doesn't finish before the cutoff, use the "did not finish before cap" option so they still get a fair ranked result

Why This Setup Works

Hyrox-style events live and die on how fast you can post results. Because FittestArena calculates rankings automatically the moment a time is entered, you avoid the spreadsheet chaos of manually sorting dozens of finish times by division. Athletes and spectators see the live leaderboard update in real time, and you get to focus on running the race instead of running the math.

Ready to set up your event? Create a free event and build your first division in minutes.