No gym, no sled, no rower. Here is how to hold on to your Hyrox fitness while you are away, using a towel, a backpack and thirty minutes, and why two sessions a week are enough.
The real problem with holidays
You are away for three weeks. No gym, no sled, no rower, and a schedule built around family meals rather than training sessions. The same question comes back every summer: is all that work about to evaporate?
The short answer is no. A break belongs in a well built season, and the off season exists precisely for that. The longer answer is more nuanced: what you lose depends far less on how long you stop than on what you do, or fail to do, during that time. Two sessions a week, even short ones, even improvised, radically change the shape you are in when September comes around.
This article gives you enough to hold those two sessions anywhere, with whatever you have on hand.
The two session rule
The principle is simple and has been documented in training physiology for decades: maintaining takes far less volume than progressing. Cut volume sharply while keeping a little intensity and you hold on to most of your adaptations for several weeks.
For Hyrox, that means:
- Two sessions a week, 25 to 40 minutes, no more.
- One session with real intensity (short intervals, honest hard effort) and one fuller session combining running and strength.
- Zero guilt the rest of the time. Walking, swimming and playing with the kids all count as activity.
Two weekly sessions will not make you fitter. That is not the point. They stop your return from feeling like starting over.
The 8 stations, holiday edition
No Hyrox station can be reproduced exactly without equipment. Each one does, however, train a specific quality, and that quality can be trained with whatever is lying around a holiday rental.
| Station | Holiday substitute |
|---|---|
| SkiErg 1000 m | 200 to 400 m front crawl, or 3 minutes of mountain climbers |
| Sled Push 50 m | 6 x 20 second hill sprints, or 40 jumping lunges |
| Sled Pull 50 m | Bent over rows with a loaded backpack, or towel tug of war |
| Burpee Broad Jumps 80 m | The same thing, and far harder on sand |
| Rower 1000 m | 300 m swim, or 4 minutes of interval squat jumps |
| Farmers Carry 200 m | Two 5 litre water containers, two suitcases, two shopping bags |
| Sandbag Lunges 100 m | A backpack filled with water bottles or sand |
| Wall Balls 75 or 100 | Backpack thrusters, or tempo jump squats |
A hiking backpack filled with water bottles easily weighs 10 to 15 kg. That is your sandbag, your kettlebell and your dumbbells in one.
Six ready to use sessions
1. The hotel room (20 minutes, no kit, no noise)
4 rounds, no rest between exercises, 1 minute between rounds:
- 15 air squats
- 10 push ups
- 20 alternating lunges
- 30 seconds of plank
- 10 burpees, step back instead of jumping if you are upstairs
This is the emergency session. It fits in two square metres and wakes nobody up.
2. The beach session (30 minutes)
Sand multiplies difficulty and cushions your joints. Expect to be 15 to 20 % slower than usual, which is completely normal.
- Warm up: 5 minutes of easy running at the water line, where the sand is firm
- 5 rounds: 100 m running on dry sand, 10 burpee broad jumps, 20 lunges
- Cool down: 5 minutes of swimming
3. The express simulator (35 minutes)
The session that comes closest to a race. 8 rounds of:
- 400 m running
- A different exercise each round, in station order: 45 s mountain climbers, hill sprint, backpack rows, 20 m burpee broad jumps, 45 s squat jumps, 100 m farmers carry, 50 m loaded lunges, 30 backpack thrusters
It is hard, it is long, and it is exactly the kind of session that keeps the run to station transition fresh in your legs.
4. The stairs (25 minutes)
A building, a car park, a hill path, a seawall. 10 climbs at a solid pace, walk down to recover. Add a loaded backpack from the sixth climb if you feel good. That vertical push work is close to what the sled and the lunges demand.
5. The pool (30 minutes)
Swimming maintains your cardiovascular system and your breathing rhythm with no impact at all. Alternate 8 times: 50 m fast, 50 m easy. Finish with 5 minutes of walking through the water pushing a kickboard with straight arms, which mirrors the sled push position.
6. The backpack session (30 minutes)
4 rounds: 400 m brisk walk with the loaded pack, 15 squats holding the pack, 10 bent over rows, 20 lunges, 10 good mornings. Simple, complete, portable.
Running on holiday, the opportunity not to waste
Eight kilometres across sixteen segments is half of a Hyrox race. Summer is the best moment to work on that base, because a run needs no gym, no time slot and no equipment.
Three precautions when it is hot:
- Move the clock. Before 9 am or after 8 pm, the temperature gap is often more than 10 degrees.
- Accept being slower. At 30 degrees, your usual pace costs your heart significantly more. Run on feel, not on the watch.
- Drink before you are thirsty. We covered the full strategy in our article on hydration and heat.
The three classic mistakes
- Trying to catch up on the last day. A three hour session the day before you travel home makes up for nothing and costs a lot.
- Training in the hottest hours on principle, because it is the only free slot. A 20 minute morning session beats an hour at 3 pm.
- Doing nothing at all for a month and then restarting at your previous volume. That is the scenario that produces the most September injuries.
What about September?
The 2026/2027 season starts in early September, and the first French races arrive quickly: Bordeaux from 30 September to 4 October, Nice from 29 October to 1 November, then Paris in mid December. If you are targeting one of them, the comeback starts now. We laid out the first four weeks in our return to training guide.
And while the season is paused, this is the right moment to dig your finisher patches out of the drawer. At ROXWALL we make hexagonal frames in France, personalised with your name, your time and your colours. Build your frame and turn a whole season into something you actually see every day.
Where's your patch?
You crossed the finish line, now display it. Create your custom hexagonal frame and turn your HYROX achievement into wall art.
BUILD MY FRAME