How to Choose a CrossFit or Hyrox Program (Before You Spend a Dollar)
Insider guide for gym owners buying CrossFit or Hyrox programming. Compare Mayhem, HWPO, PRVN, and how The Program runs both tracks. Spanish soon.
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Insider guide for gym owners buying CrossFit or Hyrox programming. Compare Mayhem, HWPO, PRVN, and how The Program runs both tracks. Spanish soon.
We're here to pull back the curtain on how CrossFit coaching brands actually work. If you're considering buying a program, this is the post I wish I'd read three years ago.
The right way to choose a CrossFit or Hyrox program is to evaluate the coaching philosophy and support structure, not the athlete on the logo. Brand affinity gets you in the door. Methodology — how a program approaches volume, recovery, skill work, and athlete support — is what determines whether you actually progress over a 12-month training cycle.
Most buyers reverse this order. They pick the brand whose athlete they admire, then assume the programming will fit them. It often doesn't.
Programming is profitable at scale, but brutal as a small business. The barrier to entry collapsed during COVID when training-software platforms matured, but writing genuinely good programming requires hours of weekly work, and large brands can deliver more value at a lower price point than independent coaches can sustainably match.
When gyms closed in 2020 and 2021, the online-training software ecosystem matured rapidly to meet demand. Platforms like TrainHeroic, TrueCoach, and BridgeAthletic significantly improved their product quality during that window, lowering the technical barrier to launching a coaching brand. Anyone with programming knowledge and a laptop could now distribute training to hundreds of athletes.
Starting a program is easy. Continuing one is brutal. Three forces compress the small-brand market:
- Time: writing one quality week of programming takes hours. Multiply across multiple tracks (RX, Masters, beginners) and it's a full-time job.
- Pricing pressure: established brands deliver more depth at $30–60/month than a solo coach can match.
- Distribution:big brands have audiences. Solo coaches have to build them from zero.
It's like trying to launch a phone company today and competing with trillion-dollar incumbents. Possible, but the math is hostile.
The viable path for small brands is to play the opposite advantage: in-person coaching, intimate community, and personalized attention that scale-based brands can't match.
Three U.S. brands dominate the CrossFit programming market, each built around an athlete with multiple Games titles. The brand you choose should align with the methodology — not the personality — that fits your training profile.
Mayhem | Rich Froning | High-volume mixed modal, community-driven | Athletes who thrive on volume and team training |
HWPO | Mat Fraser | High-intensity, structured progression, mental toughness | Competitive athletes targeting peak output |
PRVN | Tia-Clair Toomey & Shane Orr | Sport-specific periodization, recovery emphasis | Athletes prioritizing longevity and Games-level peaking |
The Progrm | John Singleton| Individualized methodology with hands-on coach support | Athletes who want a coach who knows their name |
The pattern across all four is the same: success of the coaching brand is downstream of the success of its athletes. At The Progrm we've sent ~30 athletes to the CrossFit Games across recent seasons.
The branding gets you in the door. The programming determines whether you stay. Day-to-day, these brands are genuinely different; different volume targets, different recovery models, different ways of peaking an athlete for a competition. Try a free week from each before committing.
Hyrox is a standardized fitness race format combining 8 x 1km runs with 8 fixed functional workout stations, and it has become the fastest-growing alternative to CrossFit competition. If you're shopping for "CrossFit programming" but your real goal is endurance-leaning hybrid fitness, a Hyrox program — or a hybrid CrossFit/Hyrox program — may fit you better than a pure CrossFit track.
Hyrox was founded in Germany in 2017 by Christian Toetzke and former Olympic field-hockey gold medallist Moritz Fürste. Every race, regardless of city or division, follows the same eight-station format:
| 1 | 1 km run | 1,000 m SkiErg |
| 2 | 1 km run | 50 m sled push |
| 3 | 1 km run | 50 m sled pull |
| 4 | 1 km run | 80 m burpee broad jumps |
| 5 | 1 km run | 1,000 m row |
| 6 | 1 km run | 200 m farmer's carry |
| 7 | 1 km run | 100 m sandbag lunges |
| 8 | 1 km run | 100 wall balls |
Categories include Open, Pro, Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and Relay, plus age-group divisions. Finish times typically range from 55 minutes (elite) to ~110 minutes (first-timers).
These look similar from the outside. They train very differently.
| Dimension | CrossFit programming | Hyrox programming |
| Race format | Variable, "unknown and unknowable" | Identical 8 stations every race, globally |
| Energy system focus | Mixed: glycolytic to lactic | Predominantly aerobic / threshold |
| Technical demands | Olympic lifts, gymnastics, complex skills | Running, basic resistance, no skill ceiling |
| Weekly running volume | Often <10 km | Frequently 30–60+ km, including zone 2 |
| Strength priority | Squat, snatch, clean & jerk, gymnastics | Sled work, posterior chain, leg endurance |
| Best fit for | Athletes who love variance and skill work | Runners, endurance athletes, hybrid trainees |
A pure CrossFit program will typically under-prepare you for Hyrox running volume. A pure Hyrox program will under-prepare you for the gymnastic and Olympic-lifting demands of CrossFit. Most coached athletes who race both disciplines follow a hybrid program that periodizes around the upcoming event.
Because the race format is fixed, Hyrox programming is more standardizable than CrossFit programming. Coaches can build progression models around specific stations — sled push capacity, wall-ball pacing, sandbag-lunge unbroken sets — in ways that don't apply to CrossFit's variable workouts.
This has produced a separate ecosystem of Hyrox-specific coaching brands and programs led by top finishers and former champions, alongside Hyrox tracks now offered by major CrossFit brands. Before buying, ask:
- Does the program treat running as a primary lift, not a finisher?
- Are sled push/pull, sandbag lunges, and wall balls programmed at race-specific weights?
- Is there a periodized peak built around your target race date?
*Note for buyers in 2026: Hyrox participation and event count have grown rapidly year over year.
Match your programming to your membership, not the loudest competitive season. Most affiliate gyms now serve a genuinely mixed membership — some athletes training for the Open, some chasing a Hyrox PR, plenty doing both — so for most gym owners the right answer isn't one discipline, it's a coordinated pair.
Here's the gym-owner cheat sheet:
- CrossFit-only programming fits classic affiliates whose members compete in the Open and value skill work, Olympic lifting, and gymnastics progression.
- Hyrox-only programming fits run-club-adjacent gyms, hybrid-fitness studios, or affiliates with a heavily endurance-leaning membership.
- Both tracks running side-by-side is the right answer for most modern affiliates that want to retain members across the full fitness spectrum without losing them to specialty studios down the street.
That's why The Progrm offers both CrossFit and Hyrox programming for gyms, purpose-built tracks for each discipline, written by coaches who compete and produce athletes in both. Run the CrossFit track alone, the Hyrox track alone, or both side-by-side with our hybrid periodization that respects each calendar so neither gets gutted to feed the other.
If you're a gym owner deciding what to put on the whiteboard for the next 12 months, email us with your questions and we'll walk you through which mix fits your membership.
Don't buy a program because you like the athlete. Buy a program because the philosophy fits you, the coaching support is real, and the methodology has produced results in people who started where you are.
John Singleton, the founder of The Progrm, is known for training elite athletes, including many of Europe’s top CrossFit Games competitors. With a Master’s degree in Osteopathy, John combines science-based programming with a focus on performance and recovery. Based in Mallorca, Spain, he leads a global community dedicated to helping athletes optimize performance and longevity in the sport.
