Is HYROX, the new breakout top trending sports event, not as popular as it used to be?

A month ago, HYROX took social media by storm.

75-year-old Wang Shi claimed the age group championship at HYROX Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu stops in a row, and joked that "no one makes snide remarks after I sign up for the races"; Zhang Jike was ridiculed by the on-site commentator during the competition, which sparked strong dissatisfaction among fans; actor Wang Qianyuan, MediaStorm Tim, as well as various celebrities, influencers and ordinary people flocked to the competition venues... It seems that if you don't try HYROX once, you can barely say you work out regularly.

Image source: Weibo

So what exactly is HYROX?

It is an indoor physical fitness event that was first launched in Hamburg, Germany in 2017. The rules are not complicated: 8 rounds of cycles, each round you need to finish 1km of running first, then complete a functional training. The 8 events are in sequence: ski erg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jump, rowing machine, farmer's carry, sandbag lunge, and wall ball. The total time of the whole course is counted to rank the final results. The event supports individual participation, and also has team categories for 2-person and 4-person relays.

This sport, known as the "marathon of the fitness industry", was not very popular in China before August this year. The first Beijing stop in November 2024 had less than 1700 valid participants, but by the Shanghai stop in May this year, the number of participants directly exceeded 10,000.

But traffic often comes fast and goes fast too. Just after entering September, HYROX has cooled down significantly: there are no more trending searches, and related posts are also decreasing.

This makes TopKlout think: Will HYROX rise and fade as fast as the frisbee craze in past years?

01

Rising Fast, Fading Fast

Let's first look at several sets of data.

The Douyin Index is very intuitive: before the end of June, the keyword HYROX was not even included in the index; right after it was included in early July, its popularity saw a small surge driven by the Hangzhou stop; in early August, thanks to various trending searches related to the Chengdu stop, its popularity directly hit the peak. But then it kept declining, and now it has almost returned to the starting point.

Image source: Douyin Index

To avoid deviation caused by a single index, we cross-checked the WeChat Index and Baidu Index, and found that the curves in the same period are almost exactly the same.

Image source: WeChat Index & Baidu Index

However, although the overall popularity has declined, in the special "HYROX New Generation Athletes" zone opened on the Xiaohongshu fitness channel, a large number of creators are still updating posts every day.

On one hand the traffic is ebbing, on the other hand the platforms are boosting the trend. This kind of mismatch is the most familiar script for sports categories in the social media era.

In the era of social media, a trending search and a few photos can make a sport go viral. But after the wave of traffic passes, it is also easy to leave nothing behind — the frisbee craze is the most typical example.

In 2022, frisbee became the synonym of social sports. WeChat groups were full of sign-up activities for frisbee games, lawns of all kinds were overcrowded, and even many football pitches were occupied by frisbee players, which even caused conflicts between frisbee lovers and football lovers.

Image source: Weibo

Although some people do play frisbee for exercise, and some people will participate in professional competitions, what people see on Moments and social media is mostly posing, adjusting angles and pressing shutters, trying to edit every photo into a sports poster. It does not matter whether the frisbee is thrown correctly or even caught, as long as the photo looks good.

The ending is well known to all: the frisbee craze only lasted for less than half a year before fading rapidly. Now, we can occasionally see people playing frisbee in parks, but related shares on WeChat Moments have almost disappeared.

Will HYROX follow the same old path? TopKlout believes it will not, and we can find the answer from the root of its boom.

02

The Underlying Genes That Support HYROX's Long-Term Development

To judge whether a sport can stay popular for a long time, we can't only look at trending searches, but see whether its boom is rooted in fleeting traffic or its own inherent advantages.

Half of the credit for HYROX's popularity goes to its designers — it almost accurately hits every "shareable" point in every link.

First, quantifiable results.

The results of all participants are counted into the global ranking according to unified standards. This design turns the physical fitness event into a comparable coordinate system.

Especially when "involution" has become a common social mentality, the ranking itself is the most direct driving force — your ranking drops if you stop training, and your performance improves if you train hard.

Creator @Sese Running I follow (HYROX version)

No matter it is breaking 4 hours or 3 hours in a marathon, competing for higher ITRA points in cross-country running, or even competing for more stars in Honor of Kings, wherever there is a ranking, some people will spontaneously work hard, keep sharing their results, motivate themselves, and also drive others to make progress together.

Second, a sense of ritual and honor.

After finishing HYROX, you step onto the stage, ring the gong, dry ice sprays around, and the big screen updates "NEW FINISH" and your ranking in real time. This whole process is a highlight moment generator tailor-made for social media.

Coupled with the highly tense and dynamic photos and videos during the competition, people will naturally share them on WeChat Moments, Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms, which is naturally great content that keeps spreading and attracting new players.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

This is just like when you run 37 kilometers in a marathon, there is always a sign by the roadside that says: "Run another 5 kilometers and you can post on Moments." This sentence accurately captures the psychology of most participants: people may not do it to show off, but they do have the need to share.

Many people join HYROX just because they see their friends' posts, or are attracted by photos and videos of their favorite influencers, athletes and celebrities participating in the event.

Third, the bond of group connection.

Many HYROX events are for group participation, and the players in one team are often partners who train together on a daily basis. The 2-person group and 4-person relay group not only compete for personal ability, but also for cooperation, mutual support and supervision.

One person training alone tends to slack off; when a group of people make an appointment to go to the same competition venue, they will be embarrassed to break the promise. The essence of team sports is "never abandon, never give up", which motivates each other and makes progress together, and its sustainability is far better than individual training.

In fact, looking at various group events in China in recent years, no matter the substantial expansion of teams in the TransLantau, the 100km university relay race benchmarking Hakone Ekiden, or the vigorous development of various running groups and cycling groups, this is the underlying reason behind all of them.

Fourth, non-negligible participation threshold.

HYROX requires participants to have basic fitness foundation. This threshold is not extremely high, but it naturally screens out a large number of people who want to ride the trend but lack sports foundation.

One of the important reasons why frisbee rose and faded fast is that its threshold is too low — it does not matter whether you can run fast or catch the disc, what matters is the lawn, camera and composition.

When the threshold of a sport is so low that you don't need to train to participate, it means participants can quit at any time. Since they have almost made no investment, they will feel no psychological burden to abandon the sport.

Image source: Doubao

However, too strong social attributes also mean that it is easy to be replaced by the next more fashionable social sport. Today it is frisbee, tomorrow it is paddleboarding, people are chasing "novelty" rather than the sport itself.

But to finish HYROX, even if you only complete one or two sessions, you need real physical strength and training, otherwise you will get no fun from it. The threshold determines the retention rate. Because people have made investments, the life cycle of this sport is naturally longer.

In conclusion, the competitiveness gives HYROX a mechanism to fight against boredom, the sense of ritual gives returns for continuous investment, the sense of group belonging reduces the possibility of quitting, and the required sports foundation greatly increases the difficulty of following the trend blindly.

In contrast, frisbee only has the sense of ritual for social sharing, and almost no competitiveness, group sense or sports foundation requirement — this is the biggest difference between the two sports.

Therefore, TopKlout believes that HYROX will not repeat the mistake of the frisbee craze. The short-term traffic of this sport may not reach the peak in August again, but it is more likely to become a long-lasting popular sport.

03

It Is Normal to See Traffic Fluctuation Between Events

After analyzing the inherent advantages of HYROX, let's answer the initial question: with such good genes, why does its traffic still decline?

The answer is very simple: there are no major events recently.

The small surge in early July was driven by the Hangzhou stop where Wang Qianyuan and MediaStorm Tim participated; the big surge in early August corresponded to the Chengdu stop where Wang Shi and Zhang Jike took part.

HYROX's traffic is essentially an "event calendar". When major events come, trending searches come and traffic comes; when there is no event, the topic breaks off and the index declines.

This is exactly the same logic as marathons — during the days of Beijing Marathon and Shanghai Marathon, WeChat Moments are flooded with related posts; once the season ends, related discussions immediately die down. The only difference is that there are so many marathons in China that they always seem to be popular. But HYROX has just emerged, and there are not so many events, so its traffic fluctuation looks particularly drastic.

However, the upcoming Beijing stop in mid-September and Shanghai stop in early November are both heavyweight events. It remains to be seen whether HYROX's traffic can reach a new level and set off more trending searches then.

The decline of trend-driven sports is permanent: once the hype is gone, it will disappear completely. But the decline of event-driven sports is periodic. The short-term traffic decline does not mean it is dying, it is just the off-season between events. Once the next event comes, related topics will come back.

04

Conclusion

The trending hype is ebbing, but HYROX's summer is far from over.

The hustle brought by the trend can come for no reason; but a sport that you have sweated, suffered, and won with your partners will not fade away that easily.

When the next major event is officially announced, we check all kinds of indexes again, and the answer will be clear.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "TopKlout" (ID: TopKlout), written by Xiao Song, authorized to publish by 36Kr.