HYROX is everywhere. Your feed is full of it. Search trends are through the roof. Maybe your members are already asking if you’re going to “do something” with it. Maybe you’ve even affiliated already and just haven’t figured out how to turn that investment into actual revenue.
The gyms making serious money from HYROX didn’t start by renting out arenas and packing out classes. They started small. They ran what we call a mini sim (a mini simulation of a HYROX race) and built from there.
A mini sim is a great way for gym owners to test out HYROX before spending a single dollar on affiliation fees.
What Is a Mini Sim?
A mini sim is exactly what it sounds like: You simulate a HYROX race, just smaller.
A real HYROX race is 8 kilometers of running broken into 1K segments, sandwiched around eight stations. It can be run solo, as doubles or as a relay with four people.
The average HYROX athlete trains 8-16 weeks to prepare for a full race. Your members don’t have that runway, and honestly, most of them don’t need that much volume to have a great time.
That’s why I recommend scaling down to a mini sim:
- Cut the running from 1K to about 500m per segment
- Use around six stations, depending on your equipment
- Run it as a doubles event
Doubles matters for two reasons. First, it cuts your equipment need in half: You don’t need eight rowers if partners are splitting the work.
Second, and more importantly, doubles builds in a referral engine. People bring a partner. That partner might be a spouse, a coworker or a friend they’ve been trying to drag into your gym for a year.
Across Two-Brain gyms, we’ve seen that up to 75% of mini sim participants come from outside the host gym’s membership.
One important note: If you’re not an official HYROX affiliate, you can’t call your event a HYROX sim. Call it a “HYROX-style” event instead.
Set a Financial Target
Don’t run this for free, and don’t run it as a “value add” buried in membership. Charge for it like you’d charge for any special event because it requires coaching, staff, planning and your Saturday morning.
My recommendation for pricing:
- Minimum $25 per person, or $50 per team
- Minimum revenue target of $500, which means you need 10 teams signed up
If $500 sounds small, look at what real Two-Brain gyms have done with this exact playbook:
- Lauren DiSessa made $2,500 on her very first mini sim.
- Nick Flory, out in Ohio, generated $5,000 the first time he ran it, and he now consistently pulls $5,000-$6,000 every time he runs one.
Lock In the Date
Set your race date at least five weeks out. That gives you enough runway to:
- Market the event properly
- Line up sponsors or vendors to make it feel special
- Give your athletes time to actually train and get excited
Block out two to four hours in your schedule, depending on how much you want to build around the race itself (warm-ups, awards, vendor tables, etc.).
Sell the Tickets: Three Waves
Sell your tickets in three waves, starting with your members.
- Wave 1: Your members. Explain it face-to-face first. Why it’s fun, why they should bring a partner. Once you’ve got some real conversations under your belt and know the objections people have, turn that into an email to your full client list.
- Wave 2: Your prospect list. These are the people who’ve inquired before or canceled and never came back. Promote the event to them directly.
- Wave 3: The fishing holes. These are the places where warm, ready-to-buy HYROX people are already hanging out online: regional HYROX Facebook groups, local run clubs, community pages. Post there.
Your goal for week one: Sell 50% of your capacity. If your target is 10 teams, you want five sold by the end of week one.
Race Day Logistics
HYROX races run in heats, with waves starting roughly every 20 minutes. Build your heats around your equipment. If you only have three ski ergs, only three pairs go at once.
Put your faster athletes in the early heats and your slower athletes later, so nobody’s backed up behind someone still working through a station.
Staffing you need:
- An emcee. Someone running the show, briefing athletes, calling out the course
- A photo/video person. This is a massive content opportunity. Some of our most successful HYROX gyms set up a media wall at the finish line with the gym’s name and Instagram handle, where finishers hold up a whiteboard with their time for a photo.
- One volunteer per station to enforce standards and guide traffic. If you’re running six stations, plan for six volunteers. Feed them, caffeinate them and give them a discount on the next race.
If you can swing it, a DJ elevates the whole vibe and makes it feel like a premium event.
Pre-Race Communication
One to five days out, send a pre-event email to each heat separately, so everyone knows their exact start time. Cover:
- Schedule and start time
- When results will be published (within 48 hours is standard)
- Waivers for anyone who isn’t a member
- Weather plan if you’re running outdoors
- Facility details: parking, bathrooms, water
- A heads-up that photos will be taken and used for marketing
On race day, gather everyone for a briefing before you start: how the course works, movement standards, penalties, warm-up area and what happens right after they finish.
Give finishers something physical to remember it by. Lisa Palmer of Gas Station Fitness in the U.K. gives every finisher a patch (the same finisher gift you’d get at an official HYROX race). If you don’t have time to make patches, a sticker works. The point is something branded they can wear or display that starts a conversation.
Turning One-Time Revenue Into Recurring Revenue
This is where the real money is because many of your participants and spectators weren’t members before this event.
- Send a post-event email thanking everyone for coming, offering non-members a trial or intro assessment, promoting your next event or training program, and asking for a Google review while the experience is still fresh.
- Build a social carousel with all the photo and video content your team captured. Tag people if you know their handles; they’ll share it themselves, which puts your gym in front of their entire network for free.
- Follow up personally. The Monday after the race, text every non-member who competed: a quick, human message from you, thanking them for competing and inviting them to try a regular class.
Just Start
A mini sim allows you to test whether HYROX belongs in your gym, with almost no financial risk.
Run it, and make a little revenue. If it works, do it again, and build from there.
For more help building a thriving HYROX program, check out our complete HYROX toolkit, which includes deep-dive interviews with some of the most successful HYROX gyms in Two-Brain.
And for more help growing your gym, book a call with my team.
