SkiErg technique for HYROX

How to do a good SkiErg stroke

Think of the stroke as a hinge that you fall into, with the arms acting as long levers. The SkiErg exercise guide covers the basics, and this is the version that works best for HYROX:

1. Stand close enough that the handles are just in front of your face with your arms reaching up. Feet about hip-width apart.
2. Start the pull by bracing your trunk and driving the handles down with straight-ish arms, using your lats.
3. As your hands pass your face, hinge at the hips and let your body weight fall onto the handles. Knees bend a little, but hips lead.
4. Finish with your hands past your hips and your chest over your feet, like the bottom of a kettlebell swing.
5. Recover by bringing the arms up first, then standing tall. Let the flywheel pull the handles back up rather than lifting them yourself.

The rhythm should feel like drive fast, recover slow. If you are rushing the recovery to get more strokes in, you are almost always losing distance per stroke.

Common mistakes and quick fixes

• Arm pulling. Biceps and triceps fatigue fast. Fix it by keeping the elbows only slightly bent and thinking about pulling from the armpits.
• Squatting. Deep knee bend turns it into a leg exercise and wastes energy before a 1 km run. Push the hips back instead of dropping them down.
• Short, frantic strokes. A high stroke rate with little power per stroke burns you out. Lengthen the pull and let the rate come down.
• Death grip. Squeezing the handles tires the forearms you need for the sled pull and farmers carry later. Hold firmly but relaxed.
• Holding your breath. Breathe out on the drive and in on the recovery, and keep it steady.

Damper setting and pacing for 1,000 m

The damper controls how much air reaches the flywheel, which changes how heavy each stroke feels. A higher setting feels harder, but it is not automatically faster. Most people do best somewhere around the middle of the range, where each stroke feels firm without grinding. Test a few settings over 250 m repeats in training and note the pace for the same effort.

For pacing, find your best 1,000 m in training on fresh legs, then plan to race it a few seconds per 500 m slower. That small sacrifice usually pays you back several times over across the next run and the sleds. For the bigger picture, see our HYROX pacing strategy.

Use the first 100 m to settle into your target split, hold it through the middle, and only lift the effort in the final 150 m if you feel genuinely good.

Getting off the SkiErg and onto the run

The transition from ski to run is where you find out whether you paced it well. Your lats, triceps and trunk have been working hard, and your heart rate will be near its highest point of the race so far. If you walked off the machine feeling like you had just finished a time trial, you went too hard.

In the last 50 m, keep pulling but ease the intensity slightly and lengthen your breathing. Step off, shake your arms out as you walk through the Roxzone and pick up the run at a controlled pace for the first 200 m before settling into your target. The run after the SkiErg leads straight into the sled push, and you want to arrive there with your legs, not just your lungs, in decent shape.

It is worth rehearsing this exact sequence in training so it feels familiar. The runs are covered in more detail in compromised running: how to train for it.

How to train the SkiErg

You do not need huge volume. Two short exposures a week alongside your running is plenty for most people. Some options that work well:

• Technique drill: 3 rounds of 20 strokes arms only, 20 with a small hinge, 20 full strokes, all easy.
• Intervals: 6 x 250 m at race pace or slightly faster, with 60 to 90 seconds rest.
• Race rehearsal: 1 km run, 1,000 m SkiErg at planned race pace, 1 km run. Compare the two run times.
• Aerobic builder: 3 x 5 minutes steady with 2 minutes easy between, focusing on long strokes.

Support it with strength work for the muscles it uses: lat pulldowns and straight-arm pulldowns for the pull, and trunk work from core training that actually works for the hinge. If you want structured conditioning built around the race, Lycan Strength runs Engine classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can see it on the class timetable.