Gym Business, Fitness Business, Gym Owner: Should You Add HYROX Training?

Table of Contents

• Welcome to the Gym Business Coach Podcast
• Iron Circle Austin Preview
• Unreasonable Hospitality Workshop
• Founder Branding Workshop
• Iron Circle Sundance Retreat
• Should Your Gym Offer HYROX Training?
• HYROX Brand Risks for Gym Owners
• HYROX Simulations & Short-Term Clients
• Protect Your Gym’s Training Philosophy
• Fix Your Product Before Adding More Marketing
• Build Systems That Improve Member Retention
• Final Takeaways for Gym Owners

Welcome to the Gym Business Coach Podcast

Gym business, fitness business, gym owner. Whatever brought you here, the question is the same: should you add HYROX training because people want it, or are you about to create another job for yourself?

HYROX is getting attention. People are signing up for races, gyms are offering preparation programs, and simulations are popping up. There is a real opportunity to get people moving and give existing members something exciting to work toward.

But popularity does not automatically make something a good fit for your business.

My position is simple: build a great gym first. Then decide whether an addition makes it better. Do not bolt something onto a struggling operation and pretend you fixed the underlying problem. A new offer can bring in cash while quietly making your coaching, scheduling, and member experience worse.

Before we get into HYROX, there is a reason we spend time talking about hospitality, founder branding, and the experience we create through Iron Circle. Those things connect directly to this conversation. They are about making your business stronger, not just finding another way to sell a short-term program.

Iron Circle Austin Preview

For our Austin Iron Circle experience, we planned something a little different: take over an entire boutique hotel, bring in our chef, and get about 50 members together in one place.

The property has a beer garden and a rooftop space. Those details are fun, but the point is not simply to put a bunch of gym owners in a nice hotel. It is to create an environment where people can learn, connect, and think beyond the next promotion.

We built the experience around two substantial workshops: unreasonable hospitality and founder branding. Both ask owners to look at their businesses differently.

We also put together a bowling tournament. Naturally, I built an app so everyone could enter scores and see where they stood. Apparently, a normal scorecard was not enough.

That mix matters. Serious learning does not require a miserable room and eight hours of someone clicking through slides. You can challenge people, give them useful work to do, and still make the experience enjoyable.

For a gym owner, the bigger lesson is worth noticing: the way you deliver something can be part of what makes it valuable. The experience is not separate from the product.

Unreasonable Hospitality Workshop

If you have read Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, you understand why we wanted to bring people from that restaurant team into Iron Circle.

The book explores what happens when a business goes beyond the expected version of good service. Not random extravagance. Not spending money just to look impressive. It is paying enough attention to recognize an opportunity to do something unusually thoughtful.

One story captures it beautifully. Guests visiting New York were having a high-end restaurant meal before leaving town. Someone overheard them mentioning the one thing they had missed: a New York street hot dog.

The team went outside, bought hot dogs, and had the kitchen prepare and present them in the restaurant’s own style.

Think about that. The guests were already getting an excellent meal. The restaurant did not need a hot dog to prove it could cook. The gesture worked because someone listened and cared enough to act.

That is the difference between delivering a service and making someone feel understood.

We planned to bring in people who had actually worked in that environment to teach our members how they approached hospitality. The useful question for a fitness business is not, “How do I copy a restaurant?” It is, “How well does my team notice the people we serve?”

Your members are not just names on a schedule. They have goals, concerns, and reasons for showing up. Better hospitality starts with paying attention to those things.

This is deeper work than changing an advertisement. It affects the experience people have after they buy, which is where a lot of gym businesses need more attention.

Founder Branding Workshop

Our second Austin workshop was built around founder branding with Amelia Sordell, who is based in London and runs a business focused on this work.

Most gym owners understand that their facility has a brand. There is a name, a logo, and some kind of identity attached to the training.

But what about the owner?

You have beliefs about coaching. You have a reason for building your business. You have a personality. Those things should not disappear behind a logo.

People like doing business with people. Founder branding gives them a clearer sense of who is responsible for the experience and what that person stands for.

We planned a full workshop, with photographers involved, to help members work on that side of their businesses. The purpose was not to turn every gym owner into an internet celebrity. It was to help owners communicate their identity more clearly.

That distinction matters in the HYROX conversation, too. If your own identity is weak, an outside brand can become the most recognizable thing about your gym.

There is a difference between using an opportunity to support your business and letting that opportunity become your business.

Iron Circle Sundance Retreat

We also talked about plans to return to Sundance, Utah, for a February Iron Circle retreat. It is one of our favorite locations, with a mountain home that has been among the best places we have stayed.

Snow-covered mountains, fireplaces, skiing, snowboarding, and possibly another snowmobile trip. Not a bad setting for doing some serious thinking.

But the order matters: we learn first, then enjoy the rest.

Iron Circle is not built around asking, “Which lead generation tactic are we running this month?” We bring in substantial topics and speakers because strong operators need more than another front-end offer.

Members regularly describe the value as a different level of thinking. That is what we want. Challenge the owner. Improve execution. Help the business become stronger.

There are financial qualification requirements for the group, and we look for great operators. The value is also in the room itself: people sharing wins, solving problems, and pushing each other forward.

That is the connection between these retreats and the rest of this discussion. A stronger gym business comes from improving what you do and how you lead. It does not come from endlessly collecting trends.

Should Your Gym Offer HYROX Training?

Now, the question everyone wants answered: should your gym offer HYROX training?

Maybe. But “it is popular” is not enough of an answer.

HYROX is a structured fitness competition with a repeatable format. Unlike adventure races where obstacles can change with the venue, the consistency of the format gives participants something specific to prepare for.

That structure is part of the appeal. People can train toward a clear event, compete individually or with others, and measure their performance.

From a gym owner’s perspective, there are two very different ways to get involved:

• Support current members who want to participate in a race.
• Build a new offer around attracting people specifically for HYROX preparation or simulations.

Those are not the same business decision.

The first can fit naturally into an existing coaching relationship. The second can change your programming, staffing, marketing, and the type of client coming through your doors.

At our gym, we have members who participate in HYROX. They trained with us before the races became part of their lives. They follow our normal training and do some additional preparation, then travel to their events.

I like that. It gives them motivation and a reason to push themselves. We are supporting a goal without rebuilding the gym around it.

We are not charging those members for a separate race-preparation offer. They are still our members, doing our training, with an additional interest we can help support.

Helping a member pursue a goal is different from making someone else’s event your main selling point. Before you decide, be clear about which one you are proposing.

HYROX Brand Risks for Gym Owners

When you describe your business primarily through another company’s name, you connect your reputation to decisions you do not control.

That is true whether you are formally affiliated or simply leaning heavily on that name in your marketing.

You control your coaches. You control your facility. You control how you treat members. You do not control another organization’s leadership, public statements, event operations, or future direction.

We saw this issue with CrossFit. Controversial comments from Greg Glassman concerning George Floyd created fallout that affected affiliated gyms, even though those local owners had not made the comments themselves.

The lesson is not that every outside brand will have the same problem. The lesson is that association creates exposure.

If another organization attracts negative attention, your gym may have to answer questions about it. You can do everything right locally and still get pulled into a conversation you never wanted.

HYROX is building its own business through races, equipment, and gym affiliations or licensing. Good for them. Getting more people inte...[truncated]