What your grip has done by station six
Read the race order with your hands in mind. Station 3, the sled pull, has you haul a sled of 78, 103 or 153 kg, including the sled, 50 m by rope. Station 5 is 1,000 m on the rower, gripping the handle on every stroke. Then one run of about 1 km, and you pick up two kettlebells. The SkiErg handles at station 1 count too, but for less.
That run is the only break your forearms get between the row and the carry, and it does not bring them back to fresh.
A fresh hold at race weight tells you little. The number that matters is how far you carry race weight unbroken straight after a hard row. Technique for the pull and the row is in the sleds guide and the SkiErg and row guide; all eight stations are in the stations guide.
What the evidence says about grip
Grip strength is easy to measure, so it was measured. In a 2025 study, 11 recreational HYROX athletes, 8 men and 3 women, squeezed a hand dynamometer, then raced a simulated Open race two days later. Their best grip score showed no relationship with finish time. Aerobic capacity and weekly endurance training did. The farmers carry was one of the three quickest stations, at a median of 2.7 minutes.
Two caveats. Eleven people is a small sample, and the test was a five-second maximum squeeze, not a measure of how long a grip lasts, as the authors point out.
Race results add the other half. An analysis of seven seasons of Pro and Elite results, 11,842 from women and 27,854 from men, found that an athlete's farmers carry ranking matched their finishing position less closely than their running ranking did, and that the strength-based stations, the carry among them, added disproportionately more to the total time of slower Pro athletes. For the fastest it is a small slice: in 2024/25 the 100 fastest Pro results averaged 1:25 for men, with 2 x 32 kg, and 1:44 for women, with 2 x 24 kg, about 2.5% and 2.8% of race time.
Put together: a harder squeeze will not make you faster, but a grip that opens halfway down the lane costs time, because every forced stop is time standing still. That second half is our reading, not a measured result, and it is why this page trains grip that lasts after pulling.
Carry technique: posture, stride, breathing
The pick-up
Stand between the bells with the handles in line with your ankles. Bend your knees, take each handle in the middle with your thumb wrapped round, and stand up with your chest tall. In strongman research the farmer's lift kept the trunk more upright than a deadlift, so treat it as a squat with long arms, not a round-backed pull.
Posture
Arms extended by your sides is the rule and the efficient position. Stand tall, shoulders down rather than shrugged, ribs down, with the bells hanging just off your thighs so they neither knock your legs nor swing. Squeeze hard enough to hold, not as hard as you can: a death grip in the first 50 m spends grip you need for the last 50.
Stride
Load shortens your stride and quickens your steps; that is what carrying does. In a strongman study cited in a 2019 review, the better farmer's walk performers took both longer and quicker strides and spent less time with each foot on the ground. At HYROX loads that means a fast walk with quick, smooth feet, or a light jog if the bells stay quiet at your sides. If they swing, walk: a swinging bell pulls your fingers open. Take any turns with short steps rather than one big pivot.
Breathing
Brace your trunk as you would for a light lift, then keep breathing through it, short and steady. Holding your breath might get you 20 m; it will not get you 200 m this late in a race.
Train carries after pulling, and spread grip work out
Two changes make grip training match the race: carry after you pull, and spread grip work through the week instead of one session that wrecks your forearms.
Carry after you pull
- Race order. Every week or two in a build, row 1,000 m at race effort, run about 1 km, then carry 200 m at race weight. Note where you put the bells down, if anywhere.
- Pull, then carry. Three or four rounds of one sled pull lane or 10 heavy dumbbell rows, straight into 50 to 100 m at race weight.
- Heavier holds. Three to five holds of 20 to 30 seconds with bells a size above race weight, at the end of a strength session. The lifts behind the pull and the carry are in the strength guide.
- Hangs. Dead hangs from a pull-up bar, three sets for as long as you hold a good position.
Spread it through the week
A grip session that leaves your forearms dead on Tuesday spoils Wednesday's pulling. A 2018 meta-analysis of 22 studies found that when weekly volume was matched, training more often made no significant difference to strength gains, though most of those studies used untrained people and tested lifting strength, not grip. So split your grip work into two or three short doses added to sessions you already do, rather than one grip day.
If you play padel, tennis or pickleball, or you climb, your forearms already work several times a week. Count that as grip work when you decide how much more to add. The elbow and tendon side of it is in HYROX and padel, HYROX and tennis and HYROX and pickleball.
Tell your coach what you already do and it plans around it instead of on top of it. Go to You and, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD. Find padel, tennis or climbing, searching if it is quicker, or tap Other and type it. You land on its settings: flexible or fixed days, how often or which days, and how long.
With Pro or during your trial, saving rebuilds your plan around the new shape of your week. On the free plan the sport's own sessions still go on its days, but your coach is paused, so the rest of your plan stays as it is. More in Add a sport or a class.
Racing the carry: when to put the bells down
You may set the bells down as often as you like. Do it to a plan, not in a panic.
- Know your number before race day. If you carry race weight well past 200 m after a hard row in training, go unbroken.
- If not, stop before your grip fails. Pick your spots in advance, such as a turn or the end of a lap, and put the bells down while you can still hold them: shake out, three breaths, go. In our experience two short planned stops cost less than one forced stop where your hands open and you wait for them to come back.
- Set them straight down beside your feet. Never ahead of you: moving them forward is exactly what the rule forbids.
- Pick up the way you started. Knees bent, both handles, chest tall, then walk.
- Do not dawdle. A 2026 preprint, not yet peer reviewed, of 95,326 station-to-run transitions from 132 races found the run after the carry 6.6 seconds faster than the authors' model expected, so there is little sign the carry ruins the next run. Our reading: easing off here to save your legs buys little, so walk briskly.
Know the lap count from the athlete map before you pick up, and overtake when it is safe: lane markings at the carry are only a guide.
In Doubles you can split the 200 m. The bells change hands sideways or backwards, never forwards, and the resting partner walks behind, not alongside. More in how doubles works.
Gloves, straps and chalk
- Gloves are allowed and grips are not, and whatever you start with stays with you, worn or carried, until the finish. More in the kit guide.
- Straps are not on the permitted list and need written permission from the race director. Train your grip without them.
- Chalk is allowed only at the sled pull and the farmers carry, and only the event's own chalk at that station; your own chalk, or chalk anywhere else, costs 2 minutes. The full list of penalties is in the rules guide.