Months out: build single-leg strength first
Every rep is one leg lowering you and the bag to the floor and standing you back up. A 20 kg bag is a quarter of an 80 kg racer's body mass; a 10 kg bag is a sixth of a 60 kg racer's. If each lunge carries you 60 to 90 cm, 100 metres is about 110 to 170 of those reps.
The hips do more of the work than the knees. In a lab study of 16 recreationally active young adults, the lunge moved the knee most but was driven mainly by the hip extensors, and as the weights held at their sides rose to half their body mass, the extra work went to the hip and ankle, with little change at the knee. The station needs strong glutes, hamstrings and calves as much as strong quads.
Single-leg lifts or squats?
Both. Eighteen academy rugby players who trained twice a week for five weeks with either rear-foot-elevated split squats or back squats improved both lifts, with no clear difference between the groups. A meta-analysis of 14 studies and 392 people aged 16 to 26 found single-leg training clearly better for single-leg jumps, two-leg training slightly better for two-leg strength, and no clear difference between them for single-leg strength. Squats and deadlifts build the engine; single-leg lifts teach you to use it one leg at a time, with the balance a lunge needs.
In the early months, put two or three of these in your lower-body sessions:
- Rear-foot-elevated split squat, 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 10 per leg, heavy enough that the last two reps are hard.
- Reverse lunge to a knee touch, 3 sets of 8 per leg with dumbbells or a sandbag, the back knee touching a folded mat every rep. You learn the standard from the first week.
- Step-up onto a box about knee height, 3 sets of 8 per leg, driving through the whole front foot.
- Single-leg Romanian deadlift, 3 sets of 8 per leg, for the hamstrings and the balance.
New to lifting? Use loads you can move for 8 to 12 reps, and add 2 to 10 percent once you can do one or two reps more than planned, as the ACSM suggests. Heavy single-leg work goes best on fresh legs, so it belongs in the months before your weeks fill with runs straight into stations. The strength guide has the lifts for the other stations.
Weeks out: lunge on tired legs
On race day the lunges come after seven runs and six stations, and hand you straight to the last run and 100 wall balls. That is the condition to train in the final weeks, once the strength is in place.
- Run and lunge. Run 1 km, then 50 m of sandbag lunges at race weight, for three or four rounds.
- Tired quads first. A set of sled pushes or a stretch of burpee broad jumps straight before 50 m of lunges, so you meet the bag on legs that have already worked.
- The last third in order. 200 m farmers carry, run 1 km, 100 m of lunges, run 1 km, 100 wall balls. It shows you what the lunges cost the squats that follow; the wall balls guide covers that side.
- Keep some heavy leg work, fewer sets than in the early months, so the strength you built does not fade.
Use a sandbag of your race weight when you can: it settles and shifts in a way a barbell does not.
No sandbag at your gym? In workout mode, tap the dumbbell symbol, then Equipment missing. With Pro or during your trial, your coach offers up to three replacements that train the same thing.
The swap changes only the session you are doing right now; the workout stored in your plan is not rewritten. On the free plan your coach is paused, so it cannot suggest a swap. More in Swap an exercise mid-session.
Technique under fatigue: the bag, the stride, the touch
Where the bag sits
The rulebook asks one thing of the bag: it stays fully supported on both shoulders for the whole station. Set it high across your upper back, behind your neck, where a bar sits in a back squat, and hold it at both ends so it cannot slide off one shoulder as you tire. Get it settled before you step up to the line, not halfway down the lane.
If it slips, stop with your feet side by side, stand tall and settle it again, still on your shoulders. Never lean it on a barrier or lower it to the floor for a breather.
Stride length sets your rep count
Each lunge moves you forward about one stride, so your stride decides the count:
| Ground covered per lunge | Lunges for 100 m | Per leg |
|---|---|---|
| 60 cm | About 167 | About 84 |
| 70 cm | About 143 | About 72 |
| 80 cm | About 125 | About 63 |
| 90 cm | About 111 | About 56 |
A longer stride means fewer reps but a deeper position and a harder stand on tired legs. A shorter one means more reps and a different load: in a lab study of 18 people lunging with their 12-rep maximum, a short step put more force through the joint behind the kneecap near the bottom of the lunge than a long step did. That measured force, not injury. Find a stride you can repeat for all 100 metres and keep it on race day.
The knee touch, and the stand
Both ends of the rep are judged. Lower under control until the back knee touches the floor, roughly under your hip; the touch has to be clear, but you do not need to drop onto the kneecap. Then drive through the whole front foot and stand all the way up, knees and hips straight, before the next step.
Tired racers save effort by stopping a centimetre short of the floor or stepping through before standing tall. Those are exactly what the judge watches, so do full reps in training even when the set gets ugly.
Knee sleeves are on the rulebook's permitted list, as long as you wear them from start to finish. Knee pads are not, and anything unlisted needs the Race Director's written permission. More in what to wear and pack.
Pacing 100 metres, and when to pause
Pausing is allowed, so decide your breaks before the race and take them standing tall, feet parallel, bag on your shoulders.
- Know your count. With your stride from the table, 100 metres is a number you can plan around: about 125 lunges at 80 cm.
- Break it before it breaks you. Pick a set you can hold on tired legs, such as 20 lunges, then a pause of two breaths with your feet side by side. A short planned pause keeps the stride and the touch clean; a long unplanned one usually comes after both have gone.
- Use the turns. You need not lunge around them, so the walk to the next line is a few seconds of breathing. Restart with both feet behind the line.
- Hold back on the first lane. A good lunge split leaves you able to squat through the wall balls.
Rehearse it: time 100 m at race weight straight after a 1 km run with your planned breaks, then repeat it a few weeks later with the same breaks.
Lunges and your knees
The lunges show up in the largest survey of HYROX injuries so far. That survey of 418 HYROX athletes, mostly in Germany, was posted on medRxiv on 11 August 2026 and is not yet peer reviewed. Of the 76 injuries that happened in HYROX-specific training or racing, athletes put 27.6 percent down to running and 11.8 percent to the sandbag lunges, the next most common. The knee was the commonest site among the most significant injuries reported, at 20.8 percent.
Those are self-reported figures. They do not show that lunges cause injuries or why any happened, and the authors say they do not support any particular training prescription. Build the station gradually anyway, as you would any new load: add lunge distance in steps rather than jumping from none to 100 metres in one week.
If your knee hurts when you lunge, stop lunging and see a physiotherapist or a doctor rather than pushing on. If you also play badminton, the court asks for lunges of its own; see badminton and HYROX in one training week.
On Home, find LIMITATIONS and tap MANAGE, then REPORT in the header. Choose Injury, then Right knee or Left knee, say how serious it is on the slider, which runs from Cleared to Serious, and add a note if something specific flares it up. With Pro or during your trial, your plan is rebuilt around it straight away. On the free plan the injury is saved, but the sessions already in your plan do not change, so skip anything that loads it.
As it settles, move the slider down rather than deleting it. Your coach is a training tool, not a medical service. More in Report an injury.