How to setup your Garmin for a HYROX race (or similar)

You have several options for using your Garmin in a HYROX race. I’ll go through each option, providing instructions on how to set it up on your Garmin. Some of the more complex methods will only work on advanced Garmin watches, but there’s something here for everyone.

• Bonus: I’ve also added a section on ADVANCED SPORTS sensors that might aid HYROX training and racing if you have cash to burn.
• Bonus: Information is provided below on HYROX apps for smartphones, Apple Watch, Connect IQ, and a brief note on Coros.
• Bonus: Thoughts on a new HYROX sports profile for Garmin watches in 2025.

Considerations

Your eight run legs will all be indoors. The pace or speed shown on your watch will be incorrect and unreliable if you use GPS; you must disable GPS on your Garmin. To pace competitively, you need a running footpod that measures stride length. STRYD is a well-established tool that gives an accurate pace for HYROX, but will a footpod affect your rowing straps?

In the heat of the moment in competition, you might be unsure of which lap you are on or which station to go to next. Due to GPS/distance errors, you must use the LAP TIME, not DISTANCE, from the last station exit to determine when to leave a RUN.

You can set up your Garmin watch to display the name of the next station. However, this adds risks of other things going wrong if your watch legs get out of sync and might give you more to worry about – I’ll tell you how to set this up in a minute but will advise you against complicated watch setups – use your run time to prepare yourself for the next station mentally.

Consider what you are trying to record and why. After the race, you will get accurate timing stats from the race organiser, but you cannot sync their data to any sports data platform. Therefore, if you want your data to appear on Strava, you will need your Garmin device to capture it. It’s probably enough to show your race time and heart rate tracking on Strava, but then download the official race result page as an image and add that image to the description of your Strava workout.

If you choose the multisport method, Strava will record each of the 16 legs separately ie a mess.

You might want to correct heart rate, pace, or running power data to analyse in another platform or just for your records, or you might like that information added to a cumulative training load score you keep elsewhere. Those are all good reasons. However, HYROX is likely your A race, for which you are peaking and working towards; training load considerations based on race data don’t matter, as you have a week or more of recovery to look forward to.

If you are a sports data geek like me, you want to capture every move and heartbeat precisely. Doing that in a triathlon can be challenging, but HYROX adds more complexity and difficulty. Think carefully about whether you’d rather have perfect data or your best possible time.

Remember KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. HYROX is your A race, you want technology to help you, not to add complexity and mess up your concentration and your race.

This is what you need to record.

As you should already know, these are the distances male/female age-group athletes need to record, plus, of course, the weights and reps. Most people will take 60-120 minutes, so every modern sports or smart watch has sufficient battery life to record a Hyrox.

0. • Run 1,000m
1. SkiErg: 1,000m 
   • Run 1,000m
2. Sled Push: 50m (103kg or 78kg)
   • Run 1,000m
3. Sled Pull: 50m (103kg or 78kg)
   • Run 1,000m
4. Burpee Broad Jump: 80m 
   • Run 1,000m
5. Row: 1,000m 
   • Run 1,000m
6. Farmers Carry: 200m (2 x 24kg or 2 x 16kg)
   • Run 1,000m
7. Sandbag Lunge: 100m (20kg or 10kg)
   • Run 1,000m
8. Wall Balls: 100 reps (6kg to 3m or 4kg to 2.7m)

Method 1: Cardio Profile

The CARDIO profile records heart rate and duration, but does not track specific movement patterns or repetitions, unlike the strength training profile. It’s designed for versatile use in indoor fitness, where GPS data isn’t needed.

• Copy the existing CARDIO profile and rename it to HYROX
• Ensure the profile settings disable GPS
• Adjust the data metrics to suit – you will probably want LAP TIME, TOTAL TIME, and HEART RATE as a minimum.

Risks

You can’t go wrong with this. You’re using your sports watch as a glorified stopwatch.

How to use

Manually press the LAP button as you cross the timing mat at the exit of each station.

You will receive a single workout entry on Strava, but no rep details will be included.

Method 2: Standard MultiSport Profile

Creating a multiport profile to include the correct sports profile and metrics for running, cardio, strength, and rowing is an enticing idea. However, the multisport profiles on high-end Garmin triathlon watches (Forerunner 970, Fenix) only allow for five sports, limited to specific types (not strength training).

You cannot use the standard multisport mode for HYROX as of April 2025.

Method 3: Repeat Multi-Sport Profile – This Works!

Use the multisport profile in REPEAT mode. The only sensible way to make this work is to repeat the following.

1. RUN
2. CARDIO
3. <repeat both>

This will enable you to have run-specific metrics, such as distance, recorded correctly and separately. Every station is bundled together as ‘CARDIO’. Another advantage of using the repeat method is that WHEN you incorrectly press the LAP button twice, you can push it again to correct the problem. If it were possible to create a fully customised 16-step multisport profile, you would have all sorts of issues WHEN you pressed an incorrect button.

Here’s how I would set this simple 2-step repeat

1. Create an ARENA RUN profile by copying your standard RUN profile, renaming it and disabling GPS. I included my customised STRYD CIQ data field – include whatever you prefer.
2. Create a HYROX/ARENA STATION profile by copying and renaming your CARDIO profile.
3. Create a HYROX multisport profile from the existing Duathlon or Triathlon profile. Rename your copy
   • Delete existing links to sports profiles within the multisport profile
   • Add Arena Run (GPS is already disabled, right?)
   • Add Arena Station below it
   • Disable transitions
   • Disable Auto Sport change (You won’t be able to enable it in any case, as it needs GPS)
   • Enable Repeat
   • Disable Autolap – If you use a footpod, enabling an auto-lap reminder of less than 1 km might work.

Risks

This is also a low-risk way to separate your run efforts, get accurate running pace (with STRYD) and with manual times for each station. However, other than time and heart rate it provides no real insight into your non-running activities (reps).

Method 4: Using a custom HYROX Workout on Race Day – Cheaper Garmin Watches

If you don’t have a Garmin multisport-capable watch, you can create and follow a multi-step workout instead. You can even schedule the workout for race day, when you plan to execute it.

1. Create a new running workout on your Garmin Connect page.
2. Delete every step except one for running.
3. Add a new step of type ‘OTHER’ and include the station description in the Notes so it displays on the watch.
   • (Alternatively, create a workout with eight repeats of a two-step block containing RUN+OTHER)

Limitations, such as GPS errors, apply equally to this method; therefore, please read the entire article for more information. On race day, I suggest using the repeat method and adding more than eight repeats, just in case you press the lap button incorrectly. If that happens, press LAP again to get in sync with the workout.

Risk

This method will work. However, if you name each station correctly but press the lap button incorrectly, your workout will get out of sync. Newer Garmin watches give you several seconds to undo an incorrect button press, but do you want to faff around undoing and checking things on a watch mid-race? It’s your call either way.

Advanced Sports Sensor for HYROX

You will find two sports sensors useful for HYROX: the STRYD Running Footpod and Train Red’s Muscle Oxygen Sensor.

STRYD

In this detailed review of Stryd, I examine its various applications in the field of running. For HYROX, it’s probably easiest to know that STRYD will provide highly accurate running distances and pace without the need for GPS. It costs around $200, and I use mine several times a week. It features a free and configurable Garmin Connect IQ data field that can be added to your HYROX sports profile. Consider if a footpod will catch on the rower’s straps.

More: Stryd.com

TRAIN.RED

This detailed review of Train Red discusses many strength- and endurance-related uses; however, interpreting SmO2 data requires additional knowledge. Train Red features a configurable Garmin Connect IQ data field, allowing you to add one for each muscle group to your HYROX sports profile on your watch. I use mine periodically to measure endurance and exhaustion on the road, as well as hypertrophy in the gym.

This accurately measures Muscle Oxygen (a proxy for muscular fatigue); however, the sensor must be precisely placed above the working muscle. You can move sensors whilst training, but in a Hyrox race, you either have to buy several sensors or strategically place one sensor on a muscle group that might be your weakness or one you want to conserve energy on.

More: Train Red

The boys at Train Red qualified for Chicago doubles!

Other Apps – ROXFIT !

The best Hyrox app I could find is ROXFIT. I’ve not used it, but it has a smartphone version and a sophisticated Apple Watch version. The Garmin CIQ app download for ROXFIT appears to be well-received and popular, with 50,000 downloads. However, I’m unsure how it addresses several practical issues raised in this article (please comment below and indicate if you are the developer). For example, you have to remember to disable GPS.

Coros, Polar and Suunto watch owners will face the same issues as those with Garmin watches – the tradeoff between creating a perfectly correct custom multisport profile versus a simple-to-execute cardio profile or workout. Coros recently highlighted its limited support for Hyrox multisport usage. But Amazfit has trumped the lot and been announced as the official Hyrox partner, now including a built-in Hyrox workout that handles multi-user participation (thanks to @Chirs for the reminder)

Thoughts

Superficially, it’s bad that your $1,000+ Garmin multisport watch lacks a built-in HYROX sports profile or the ability to create a detailed one. My advice for race day is that you don’t need one; even if one existed, you shouldn’t use it. That said, when training with HYROX-like sets, you probably will want the ability to correctly record each leg to help track your improvement over time. For this reason, and due to the growth in HYROX-like events, Garmin may expand its multisport features this year to make this easier. It will likely only be a feature on the new Forerunner 970 or added to the existing Fenix 8 – i.e. it would only be a top-end feature on an expensive watch.

The Cardio Profile: Garmin has issues with its physiology metrics supporting HYROX. Many of you use heart rate when performing strength-based activities; however, that is an invalid use of HR data. HR data does not correctly measure muscular strain and is only valid for endurance activity. That said, HR/HRV recovery metrics from WHOOP properly account for how your body copes with the stresses of strength/HYROX workouts, albeit with caveats; similarly, Garmin’s training readiness metrics also take this into consideration.

Advice: Use the Cardio profile to get simple lap info. For more detailed race logging, create a 2-step WORKOUT on cheaper Garmin watches or create a 2-step multisport SPORTS PROFILE on the more expensive watches.

Q: What did you use in your last HYROX-like race?