A HYROX-style workout is a for-time circuit that pairs heavy compound lifts with high-rep bodyweight conditioning — and here is the exact one I ran: a 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 ladder of squat cleans at 135 lb, 20 lb wall balls, push press at 135 lb, and burpees, with a 60-minute cap. That's 336 total reps, 84 of every movement, and the weight on the bar never comes down as the reps do. If you already squat and press with a barbell, run it as written and log the time. If 135 lb isn't a weight you can move for reps with your heart rate pinned, scale it — three versions are below, and the scaled one is still a real workout.
What is a HYROX-style workout?
A HYROX-style workout is a for-time circuit built from HYROX's movement pool — compound lifts plus low-skill conditioning — run in a normal gym, with no running stations. You pick the movements and a rep scheme, start a clock, and the clock is the score.
An actual HYROX race is a different event. It's 8 × 1 km runs, each one immediately followed by one of 8 functional stations, in the same fixed sequence every race, indoors in an exhibition hall: ski erg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carry, sandbag lunges, and wall balls.
So be clear: this is HYROX-style, a hybrid circuit that borrows the flavor. It is not race prep, and I've never raced HYROX. If you have a race on the calendar, you need the runs and the specific stations, and this won't substitute for either. If it's the running half you want, this hybrid workout pairs 8 × 800m runs with 8 high-rep stations on one clock.
One thing before the workout: a circuit like this doesn't burn fat on its own — your calorie deficit does, and conditioning is just one way to widen it. That argument has its own article: conditioning workouts for fat loss.
What is the exact workout?
Four movements, seven rounds, one clock. Here it is exactly as I posted it — the reel is here.
For time: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3
- Squat cleans 135 lbs
- Wall balls 20 lbs
- Push press 135 lbs
- Burpees
Every round, decrease the number of reps by 3. Seven rounds total: 21 of each movement, then 18, then 15, down to a final round of 3. The cap is 60 minutes — that's the challenge exactly as I posted it: finish it in under an hour. If the clock hits 60 and you're still moving, stop there and write down where you got to.
Squat cleans — 135 lb
The most technical movement here, and the first to degrade when you're breathing hard. Break it into singles the moment your setup gets sloppy — a round of 21 unbroken is not the goal. If the front rack or the depth is the limiter rather than your lungs, that's a squat problem, and here's how to increase your squat.
Wall balls — 20 lb
Squat to a full catch, drive, throw to the target. Cheap on the bar, expensive on your legs and your breathing — this is where the ladder stacks fatigue for the push press.
Push press — 135 lb
Same bar, no weight change. A leg-driven press, not a strict one, which is the only reason 84 reps at this load is survivable. If the bar stalls at your forehead rather than your shoulders, work on how to increase your overhead press.
Burpees — bodyweight
The tax collector. They come last in every round, so you pay for whatever the other three just did to your heart rate.
How hard is it, really?
Hard enough that I'd rather give you the arithmetic than an adjective.
Add the ladder: 21 + 18 + 15 + 12 + 9 + 6 + 3 = 84 reps of every movement, and 336 reps total. The barbell work alone is 84 squat cleans plus 84 push press at 135 lb, which is 22,680 lb moved on the bar in a single session. Add 84 × 20 lb of wall balls and that's another 1,680 lb thrown overhead.
And look at where that volume sits. The first three rounds — 21, 18, 15 — are 54 of your 84 reps per movement, about 64% of the workout, before you've earned any of the short rounds. It doesn't feel like a ladder until round four.
Here's the honest part: this one almost made me quit halfway, after round 3. That's not a hype line from an ad, it's what I wrote in my own caption on the day, and it's the reason I'd rather hand you the scaled version than watch you bail in round 2 and decide hybrid training isn't for you.
How do you scale it if 135 pounds is too heavy?
Scale the load first, the volume second — and never both on your first attempt, or you'll have no idea which change made it doable.
Version 1 — lighter barbell
Same ladder, same movements, 95 lb on the bar. Still too much for a set of 21 with your lungs burning? 75 lb. The right number is one you could do 12 unbroken of while fresh. If you can only do 5 fresh, it's a max attempt with extra steps. A barbell complex uses the same fresh-reps test, run on your weakest lift.
Version 2 — dumbbell only
Swap the barbell for a pair of dumbbells: dumbbell clean for the squat clean, dumbbell push press for the barbell push press. Two 35s or two 40s is a reasonable start. Dumbbells let you drop one arm at a time, which keeps the set moving when a barbell would just sit on the floor.
Version 3 — no equipment
Squat jumps for the squat cleans, pike push-ups or a backpack press for the push press, jump squats or a med ball slam for the wall balls, burpees stay burpees. You lose the load, keep the structure, and the time cap still does its job.
The volume scale
Cut the ladder to 15-12-9-6-3. That's 45 reps per movement, 180 total — a little over half the prescribed workout — and it fits comfortably under the 60-minute cap for most people.
The rule for which lever to pull first: if your form is what breaks, drop the load. If your clock is what breaks — you're moving fine but you're going to run past 60 minutes — cut the volume. And either way, stop the set when form breaks down. A rep you can't do cleanly isn't a rep, it's a number you wrote down.
Will a workout like this cost you muscle?
No — not at one session a week, and the concurrent-training research is less scary than its reputation.
The original worry traces to Wilson and colleagues' 2012 meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which pooled 21 studies and 422 effect sizes and found hypertrophy effect sizes of 1.23 for strength training alone versus 0.85 for concurrent training. The detail everyone drops: resistance training combined with running — but not cycling — produced the significant decrements in hypertrophy and strength.
A decade of better-controlled work softened the picture. Schumann and colleagues' 2022 review in Sports Medicine ran 43 studies and found concurrent training did not significantly reduce gains in maximal strength or hypertrophy compared with strength training alone. Worth naming the limit: those trials tested endurance work — running and cycling — not a barbell metcon, so this is the closest evidence we have rather than a test of this exact session. The one outcome that did suffer was explosive strength, which is a real cost if you're a jumper or a sprinter, and mostly a footnote if you're trying to look good with your shirt off.
Order helps too. Eddens, van Someren and Howatson 2017 found that putting resistance work before endurance work gave a 6.91% advantage in lower-body dynamic strength (p = 0.006). For hypertrophy the effect was 1.15% and not significant (p = 0.40). So if both land in the same session, lift first — and don't expect the order to do much for size either way. The bigger lever on keeping muscle while you diet is how to lose fat without losing muscle.
How often should you run it?
Once a week at most — and the better way to use it is as a measurement, not a program.
This is how I treat every hard benchmark: instrument it, observe it, adjust one thing. Record your time, the version you ran, and where you broke — round 3, set 2 of push press, whatever it was. Then leave it alone. Retest after a full training block, and change exactly one variable between tests — the load, or the volume, or nothing at all. Change the weight and the ladder and your training week and the new time tells you nothing: three inputs, one number.
What sits between the two tests is the actual training — 4 days of lifting, progressive overload, 3 sets of 8-12 at 1-2 reps in reserve, and 10,000 steps a day doing the quiet work. This workout doesn't build that. It reads it back to you.
If you want the week that the retest is measuring, that's the 4-day lifting split I build the rest of my week around — the split, the overload rule, and the scorecard, on one page.