Hyrox is the darling of the fitness world right now. By the oldest objective measure – head-to-head competition – Alexander Roncevic is currently the best at it, having romped to victory at the 2024 World Championships in a time of 56min and 21sec.

Now, as he gears up to defend his title in Chicago on 12 June, the Austrian athlete tells The Independent about the training tweaks and techniques he has employed to ensure he maintains the top spot.

His preparations have included a shift in training focus – linked to the addition of smoother-moving turf on the sled sections of the race – as well as a training camp in Kenya and some brutal workouts to improve on any (relatively) weak spots in his game.

Below, he shares insights into a week in the life of a Hyrox world champion who’s hungry for more and reveals the race-winning secret that sets him apart from competitors.

Who is Alexander Roncevic and what sets him apart as Hyrox world champion?

Roncevic is an interesting character. Given Hyrox is still in its fledgling years, the 32-year-old is a relatively old head in the game, having been competing since 2018 – the year after its conception.

But, until recently, the ESN athlete was balancing his fitness commitments with a career as a primary school teacher in his native Austria. Doing this, he was able to become world champion. “I want to win the grand slam of majors,” he tells. me. So this season, he’s quit his job to become a full-time athlete.

As a result, he has more hours to dedicate to his training, and my quads start shivering at the mere description of his gruelling workouts. But, he tells me, his background as a swimmer has made this a seamless adjustment. The consequent strength of his “mental game” is his secret weapon, and the main thing he believes sets him apart as an athlete.

“I used to swim for almost 20 years, and the work I did is still in my brain,” he says. “Waking up early in the morning for training, going to school, then training again after school for 15 years straight every day – this taught me a lot of discipline.”

These swimming sessions were a far cry from a few zone two lengths of breaststroke. Roncevic would often hit a hard 400m for 25 rounds, or 1,500m for eight rounds, covering distances many of us couldn’t imagine running. Comparatively, he says, the variety of Hyrox training is rather fun.

“Swimming back and forth in the same pool for years and years and years gets boring, but it does teach you mental toughness,” he laughs. “Now I’m enjoying training more because of the diversity. [In Hyrox] you have the running part and the strength part; I can go for a bike ride, or I can meet friends for some tennis or badminton. You can just do whatever makes you better as an athlete.”

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Alexander Roncevic: running training

The sled push and sled pull sit in a crucial position during a Hyrox race – stations two and three. If you’re ready for them, you can run the remainder of the race with fairly fresh legs. If you’re not, you’ll lose valuable time, not only on the stations themselves but also the subsequent runs.

For the 2024/25 Hyrox season, Roncevic planned to tackle all four of the sport’s majors (Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Glasgow) with the aim of scooping a tennis-esque grand slam. But his plan was put on hold when he, in his words, “struggled with the sleds” in Hong Kong.

However, for the 2025 World Championships, competition organisers announced they would be introducing a “new Hyrox carpet”, and Roncevic adapted his training accordingly.

“For all of us, we know now it’s going to be way easier on the sleds,” he says. “That’s why I changed my training a bit, doing more runs, more intervals, trying to get faster, trying to build more endurance and trying to work more on the compromised running side of things [a Hyrox-popularised phenomenon which simply means racking up the miles on already tired legs].”

This involved four to five running sessions per week, comprising short (up to 400m) and long (up to 2km) intervals at varying paces, tempo runs covering 10-12km at slightly above his Hyrox pace of 3min 30sec/km, and a long run. The long run is usually around 25km or two hours, Roncevic says, and he likes to hit the trails to perform this at altitude.

Combined, these running sessions leave him with a weekly mileage of about 60-70km per week.

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“It’s not that much – there are elite athletes running a lot more – but for me it’s enough,” he says. “I used to swim before, then I started running when I was about 22, so at the beginning 20km per week was enough to improve. Over the years I added more kilometres every week, and now I’m at around 60km, so there is still plenty of room to do more and get better.”

During his preparations for the 2025 Hyrox World Championships, Roncevic skipped the Las Vegas event to spend 10 days training in Kenya and “run with the best”. Due to the shortness of his stay, he says training adaptations were limited from this trip, yet he still learned a lot from his fellow runners.

“Their only dream is to be the best runner and help their family,” he says. “You can see them chasing this every day, training two or three times a day. They are dedicating their life to this.”

Alexander Roncevic’s tempo run for improving Hyrox performance

Complete the session below at a consistent pace:

Run 10-12km at a slightly faster pace than you can hold during a Hyrox race.

Alexander Roncevic: Hyrox-specific training

Each week, Roncevic tends to do two or three Hyrox-specific workouts and one “erg session” where he focusses on improving his ability on the exercise machines involved in the race.

“What I would recommend to people is working on each station separately, even if you do shorter sessions,” he says. “Let’s say you have 30 minutes; just focus this 30 minutes on the SkiErg. Do an interval session, eight rounds of 500m or whatever, then do another [mixed-modal] session later in the week. For example, you could use the SkiErg with running, wall balls and burpees.”

He applied the same approach to the burpee broad jump station in a Hyrox race, and you can try his capacity-building session using the protocol below.

Alexander Roncevic’s 20-minute capacity-building burpee workout

EMOM (every minute, on the minute) for 20 minutes:

“In each minute, you’re done after about 30 seconds, but continue for 20 minutes and you’ve done 200 burpees,” Roncevic says. “That’s a quality session, and means you have done your burpee work for the week, almost, in 20 minutes.”

However, he admits these specific workouts were a larger part of his training earlier in his Hyrox career.

“This year I have almost the same strength numbers as I did in 2024, and station-wise there was not much to improve,” he explains. “Now, at the point I’m at most of my effort is trying to get better on the running side. When I look back at this last year, I ran so much and I really improved, so I’m looking forward to the World Championships and seeing how it can translate on the track.”

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Alexander Roncevic: strength training

Roncevic’s aim in the gym is to “get stronger, not build muscles”. For this reason, he lifts heavy weights for low reps twice per week.

“As a Hyrox athlete, you want to gain strength, but the most important thing is to find the right balance between being a fast runner, being light and being as strong as possible,” he says. “Having the power of a weightlifter and the weight of a Kenyan runner, that would be the perfect combination.”

Roncevic puts his strength sessions earlier in the day so he can attack them with fresh muscles, with running and Hyrox workouts following in the afternoon. To maximise efficiency, he also performs most exercises as complementary supersets – two exercises performed back to back without rest, which work different muscle groups and have minimal interference between them.

One of his favourite protocols involves performing a bench press and a rowing movement (both exercises “really heavy’) to build the strength necessary for pushing exercises like the sled push and wall balls, as well as pulling exercises like the sled pull. After completing this, he rests for 30-60 seconds, then goes again.

Alexander Roncevic’s Hyrox strength training workout

Perform the sequence below for five rounds:

Alexander Roncevic: training diet

A fairly recent change Roncevic has made, which has seen an uptick in his performance, is fine-tuning his nutrition.

Wholefoods dominate his diet, but he doesn’t have any strict number of calories, protein or carbs he shoots for. Instead he has developed more general habits over years of learning how his body works.

“I was never 100 per cent into hitting certain numbers, like bodybuilders used to be, counting their carbs,” Roncevic explains. “But what I have learned is, if I have a longer endurance session one day, I’m going to make sure my carb intake is a bit higher than usual. Then, if I do specific strength sessions, I’ll make sure I have my creatine and maybe an extra protein shake.”

Working with supplement company ESN has also helped him dial in his nutrition, particularly before, during and after training sessions.

“When I was younger during my swimming career, I didn’t know anything about nutrition, and nobody is going to tell you about it – your coach just keeps yelling, ‘Go faster’,” he says. “Now as a professional, if you’re trying to find those last percentages of your performance, I think it’s really important.”

“Being with ESN for more than a year now has changed my whole view of nutrition. I have a really nice routine to make sure I get enough protein and carbs. For example, ESN has this new crazy performance line with the pre-workout, the Base [a formula of peptides, amino acids, plant extracts and creatine], the gels and the Carb Loader.”

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Alexander Roncevic: recovery

The pillars of Roncevic’s recovery efforts are simple: sleep and mobility. He aims to hit between eight and 10 hours of good quality sleep each night, adds targeted mobility work into his warm-up for most workouts, and works with a physiotherapist to ensure his body is operating at its best.

“If you sleep for just four hours, you don’t need to do any sauna, cold plunge, compression boots, massages or whatever,” he says. “First, try to take care of your sleep, and then you can always add in some other recovery techniques.”

“And then working on your mobility is important because it doesn’t just help you as an athlete. It will make you better at your sport, but also help you later in life. We are all getting older, and if you are 50, 60 or 70, you still want to move well, so now is the time to take care of it.”

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What’s next for Alexander Roncevic?

Roncevic is already a consummate athlete, but his future plans involve improving further, with the grand goal of achieving “the perfect season”; a grand slam year with wins at all four majors (Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Glasgow), topped off with victory at the Hyrox World Championships. He already has grand ideas in mind to achieve this in the coming years.

“My training camp in Kenya was a nice first impression, but we were only there for 10 days, so training-wise there was not a big outcome” he explains. “Running at 2,200 or 2,400m [elevation], your body needs time [to get used to it] if you come from Europe, so at the beginning you run very slowly waiting for your body to arrive. If you want the biggest benefit from it, you are going to stay for at least three or four weeks.”

However, for now, his eyes are firmly on the 2025 Hyrox World Championships in Chicago.

“It’s my sixth World Championships, so I’m not as nervous as the first time,” Roncevic tells me. “I feel good, I’m looking forward to it and it’s been two or three months since my last event, so I can’t wait to race.”

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