For gym owner Lisa Palmer, HYROX affiliation has paid off more than she ever anticipated: massive ROI and an incredible retention boost.
Lisa runs a CrossFit affiliate in London and became a HYROX affiliate three years ago. The U.K. market is roughly three years ahead of North America, so what she’s built is a solid preview of where your gym could be headed.
Watch this video to hear from Lisa herself, or keep reading for the key takeaways.
HYROX as a Retention Play
Lisa’s gym had drifted toward an older, busier crowd: working professionals, parents, people who loved CrossFit but didn’t necessarily want heavy barbell work every day. HYROX felt more accessible, so she ran a few trial classes, and members loved it.
Three years ago, her churn rate was 14% month over month. Today it’s under 5%.
Lisa doesn’t credit HYROX alone, but it certainly played a role: HYROX gives members a milestone to train toward. If an event is six months out, that’s what they’re committing to. Their motivation shifts from “just show up and work out” to “we’re training for something.”
How She Added HYROX to the Schedule
Instead of bolting HYROX onto an already-packed timetable, Lisa looked at her least-attended classes and swapped them out for HYROX. Those dead hours became some of her busiest.
A few keys to how she rolled it out:
- She communicated clearly with members about why the swap was happening, so nobody felt blindsided.
- Because HYROX is lower-skill than the barbell work in her CrossFit classes, she opened it up to free trials and let members bring friends.
- She started with two HYROX classes a week. Today she runs nine.
The ROI: 15X on Her Affiliation Fee
Lisa is now pulling in roughly 15 times ROI on her HYROX affiliation fee. Even if she did nothing but run two simulation events a year, she says the math would still work out to about 6.5X ROI on its own.
She hosts a winter and a summer simulation event, and each one brings in roughly £2,500 (about $3,500 USD). Members love having something concrete to train toward, even when they can’t get into an official HYROX race.
And she’s not even at the top of the ROI range.
As a Two-Brain mentor, Lisa works with a gym owner in the Netherlands who is hitting 89X ROI on his affiliation fee (pulling in around $22,000 a month from HYROX). He runs prep courses, simulation events, personal training and small-group PT around HYROX.
Another gym owner, who is the only HYROX affiliate in his area, generated $6,500 from a single “mini HYROX” event.
Official Events Sell Out, so Build Your Own
Getting people into the big official HYROX races has gotten harder as the sport has exploded. Lisa has applied for early-bird affiliate tickets to the last three or four major events and still hasn’t gotten one herself.
Her advice: Don’t build your whole program around getting members into races you can’t guarantee access to. Instead:
- Track the official event calendar (in her market, that’s HYROX London every November and HYROX Birmingham in October) and work backward from it.
- Start a race-prep course about 10 weeks out (a 6-week course plus a buffer).
- Follow the prep course with a simulation event.
- Use the prep course as a diagnostic. Coaches watch where each person is weak (sleds, wall balls, endurance) and then offer targeted next steps: extra PT sessions, nutrition guidance, small-group work.
- Separate your audience into two buckets: people training for an official event, and people who just want to train HYROX-style. Not everyone needs, or wants, a race.
How HYROX Protects Her CrossFit Program
This is the part Lisa didn’t see coming. HYROX has become an internal option for members dealing with shoulder pain, burnout or just wanting something with less load. Instead of canceling, those members shift to HYROX for a few months.
At the same time, HYROX-only members watching the CrossFit classes next door often upgrade and do an on-ramp into a full CrossFit membership.
It flows both ways: CrossFit members downshift when they need to, HYROX members upgrade when they’re ready. Lisa can’t fully measure how many memberships she’s saved this way, but she’s confident it’s meaningful.
HYROX-only memberships alone account for just 5% of her gross revenue, but that’s still enough to fund a full-time coach.
Low-Effort HYROX Marketing
Lisa’s marketing approach is refreshingly low-effort:
- She posts weekly in local Facebook groups announcing she’s a HYROX affiliate, with a link to a free trial class.
- She uses simple physical signage outside the gym.
- She doesn’t spend money on HYROX marketing outside of simulation events.
Why does this work? In the U.K. last year, “HYROX” overtook “CrossFit” as a Google search term for the first time.
And the U.S. isn’t far behind. People are already searching for HYROX. All you have to do is put your hand up and say you offer it.
Does HYROX Work for Every Gym?
Lisa’s answer, based on mentoring gyms across different models: Yes, with some nuance.
She worked with a 1,200-square-foot access gym that had no room for sled lanes or running, so they built a PT-based HYROX offering instead of a full class model. The framework bends to fit almost any facility or business model.
One myth worth killing: HYROX isn’t just for hardcore athletes. It draws from the same affluent, schedule-flexible crowd as Ironman and big endurance races: people who’ll fly to a city, book a hotel and drop hundreds of dollars on race gear. But it’s accessible at the entry level, and HYROX now even runs youth programming, so the age range spans further than most people assume.
We’ve put together everything you need to build your own profitable HYROX program. Check out our complete HYROX toolkit for gym owners and start building your version of this playbook today.
And if you want a mentor to help you build out the full plan, book a call here.
