Why HYROX Is the Best Business Opportunity in Fitness Right Now

This isn't going anywhere.

If you're dismissing this as a fad, you can't. I think people need to get clear on the words, right? Trend, yes. Fad, no. And a trend line is based on data that is real and documented and clear on what it's doing. A fad comes and goes and burns out. And what I've seen across that platform is zero cities. Out of more than a hundred cities in the world, zero cities have shrunk. You would think a fad would show a curve that goes up down in at least one city or two cities, zero cities. So the growth of this as a sport taking hold in every market, it gave a sport and a reason to train to more than 200 million people on the planet. Do you have a sport? No. Do you go to the gym? Yes. So why are you going to the gym? I'm going to the gym maybe to lose weight or maybe to get stronger, but there's no real clear goal. And now they all have a sport. Like they're like, I'm not working out of the gym. I'm an athlete. And I have a sport. I'm training for HyROX.

Hey friends, welcome to the HyROX Authority series, which is brought to you by Center, the official equipment provider of HyROX. Now, here's why this series exists and why we did it. HyROX isn't just a race anymore, it's a full-blown movement, and it's one of the greatest coastal opportunities I have seen in this industry in a very long time. So, events, training programs, community, equipment. There's an entire ecosystem here that can be built on, and most of the industry hasn't quite caught up to it yet. So we sat down with the people who know it best to break down exactly how gym owners and operators can grow into it and listen. I'm also a huge fan of Center's equipment. I train on it weekly, and it's great ready. Please go check them out at center.com. That is C-En T R dot com. Onto the show. All right, here we go. Andrew Tigerman, good to see you again. Welcome back for this very special series that we're putting together here.

Great to be back, as always.

Yes. This is very important to me. I was just telling you. So 1.5 million athletes, 100 races in 2026, over 100 races, and that's totaling over 300 race days. You just got back from the New York City event with over 50,000 participants. And we're going to talk about that in a second, what that experience was like. I mean, the momentum behind HyROX is, you know, seemingly unstoppable at this point. Like it's just a freight train at this point, just keeps growing and going and going. And I don't know when it could possibly stop or what the cap is, but it's really exciting. And one of the reasons I'm so compelled to do this series, you know, starting with you and the three other people that will dive into deep, you know, what the opportunities are across the whole ecosystem. It's like I really believe in this, man. I've been in this industry for 17 years. Um, I have seen some transformational trends, CrossFit being one of the first ones that I got to experience because I was kind of in there. But high rocks and your partnership with them at center is uh if if you're an operator and you haven't considered it yet, or maybe you're on the fence or those who are like looking to really optimize what they're already doing with this partnership, um, that's who this is for. So um, let's start with this, man. Before we get into all that meat, like give us a just a couple of minutes on your background. You know, you've you've been an executive for a long time. You you found the spawn center. Um, you took a you took a chance a couple of years ago, as we've talked about in the past, and it seems to be paying off. So yeah, give us uh give us your uh your resume quickly.

So I prior to coming over and and running center, I spent 12 years at the Walt Disney company where I managed uh the global publishing and digital media units you know across some of the biggest brands in the world uh that everyone's grown up with and knows intimately. And that experience of building products and building content for audiences that they love is um something that attracted me at the center where it was doing something very similar, but around the wellness, health, fitness category, which is also a category that I personally have a lot of affinity for. So it it was just this this really great opportunity to to carry over something that I had done for more than a decade into something that was a passion area.

Yeah. Well, you um when you started with Center, I mean, you and I have I've I've gone over this before, but we've had a couple interviews on this podcast. And you know, at first it was very much a digital fitness company, it still is, right? You guys still offer a lot through the app and your partnership with Chris Chris Hemsworth. Um you took a a a significant risk right around the time of the pandemic of partnering with HyRox. Maybe walk us through that decision one more time because that was a scary time for everybody, dude, uh in this industry. And uh you you took a a big step and a big swing.

Yeah. Yeah. So as you mentioned, we've been we've been in the digital content space. Chris Emsworth was, you know, founder of where where Center started, and the business really got its its go in building programming that helped people across nutrition, mental uh wellness, and fitness. And when I came in, it was how do we up-level this whole business around being a serious fitness player in in a market that's actually actually very mature. And uh and I had the the opportunity to experience HIROX back in 2022. And you know, one thing from my time at Disney that I I I feel like I got good at was understanding cultural phenomena, like that when there's there's like this this feeling of when you see something that's beginning to take off, community, the sort of just the the buzz, the dialogue that's happening around it. And when I went to the HyRox event in Anaheim, I felt it. Like I I felt like, okay, this is not just an event, this is something bigger than that. And went back, chatted with the team at at Center, and we said, all right, we think we know what this is, we're gonna we're we're gonna go for it. And what we decided was not we weren't gonna be a sponsor. We weren't this wasn't about putting our name on something or a you know a rotating logo or whatnot. This was we wanna be the infrastructure of what we think is about to be a sport. And if we could be the infrastructure, then that will allow us to be partnered with high rocks in the evolution of the sport, both at the competition, but also more importantly for us in the training environment, right? Because if the sport took off, then by default, training for the sport would take off as well. And that that was the bet. Uh it was a it was a pretty big bet, but that was a bet. And luckily, we're here three years later talking about it in this regard. That's awesome.

It's what it's one of my favorite things. Uh it's one of my favorite stories in this industry. And uh, you know, so if high rocks is the gold, you guys are are the the shovels and the picks, essentially, right? You are you're helping the whole thing build. Yeah. So you just got back from New York and you know, 50,000 participants over, what was it, nine days, I think. You know, I I talked about this time. If you get 50,000 spectators at an event, that's tremendous. 50,000 participants? I mean, what does that even feel like, especially in New York City? Like that's that's that's quite a feat, man. Give us give us your give us your download on what the event was like to you.

Yeah, so it was amazing. Like it was it was a constant, like high rocks took over New York City for two weeks. Like it was like a constant buzz of high rock. They lit the Empire State Building and High Rocks Yellow.

There was a bump.

There's literally a 10-foot bumper plate on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, uh in in sort of in celebration of High Rocks uh in New York. And so they the the constant uh the constant flow of participants and spectators down to Pier 76 just was non-stop. And it was funny, like I was in Central Park, which is for people that know New York, is you know, tens of blocks away from from Pier 76. And all these high rocks people were you know warming up, jogging around the park. It it was like a complete takeover in that and that the bright pink shoes that have become sort of the uh the uh marker of like high rocks athletes, they were everywhere. Uh so it was it was really from where from where things started to where they were in New York, it was really amazing. And uh the it's gone from me talking about high rocks in America and sometimes people like looking at me like what? To eventually people being like, oh yeah, no, I've heard of high rocks, to now, oh yeah, no, I'm training for high rocks. So it's it's really evolved quite dramatically over a three-year time horizon where it's no longer really what is high rocks. It's kind of like, oh, I know someone training for it, or I'm training for it.

Hey friends, real quick, let's talk about Center, the official equipment provider of HyROX and the sponsor of this series. Nine years owning gyms taught me the hard part isn't buying equipment, it's buying equipment your members actually show up for. That's what makes this different. HyROX training gives your floor a football, and it rates on the calendar keeps people coming back. Center builds the equipment the floor runs on and they work directly with operators to bring it into your space the right way. If you want to capture this movement in your gym, start at center.com. That is D-E-N T-R dot com. Back to the show. Yeah, amazing. That is uh I didn't know about the Statue of Liberty and all that. That is uh God's come so far. It's just come so far, right?

It's it's funny how context, like New York City Marathon is I think 55,000 athletes run the New York City Marathon. New York City Marathon's been around for greater than a half a century, and I think high rocks New York's been around for three or four years, and it will definitively be larger than New York City Marathon in 2027. So it's this sport is a sport with athletes competing that's now made it to the largest levels on a global platform. Like it just it that's that's just the reality. Uh, that I think for triathlons, it took about 20 years for triathlons to be accepted as a mainstream sport. HyROX has collapsed that. And I think it's because it's so accessible. Honestly, like for triathlon, you need a bike, you need to go swimming in a lake or in the ocean, and you know, you need to be able to go out and train for six hours at a time. It's it's pretty intense. Hyrocks, you need access to a gym, you need access to uh you know optimal equipment, and you're you're good to go. And so it's just a such a more more approachable sport.

Well, I think it's important to know too, you did it with your son, right? You uh participated in that that's uh you you live and breathe it.

Yeah, no, it's it's I I've actually done three high rocks events now in four months. So I'm I've like I've I've definitely uh fallen into the uh the uh the I guess the mold of like somebody that's gotten addicted to the data and figuring out how do I get better every event. But the last one I I did do with my son, which was really fun uh as a like for anyone and anyone out there that's a parent, doing a father or mother, son-daughter uh high rocks and crossing the finish line with your kid is really like a cool thing. Like it's it's uh it's really fun. So I I highly recommend it. And it kind of reinforces this whole notion of community, right? Whether it's community with like-minded athletes that are all crossing that finish line um, or you're crossing it like with your with your kid's uh uh hand and you know, celebrating what you just accomplished.

Yeah, man, that's fantastic. Well, let's get into the businessy type questions here. So I I think the biggest thing I want to point out is, you know, it's like you said, it's only been around for five-ish years, really, right? In reality. What is if you look at operators who have gotten in early, right? Ones who have started participating and kind of started leveraging this whole movement and devoted time and resources to it, what is what is that like for them? What are they sitting on right now?

So the the clubs that got in early are, I'd say, in a a pole position of having the first bite at becoming known as the the destination or a destination for Hyrox training. And as I mentioned earlier, like this has gone from being something that maybe people heard of to something that many people have heard of and are looking for solutions to go train. And what that what that means based on everything we've seen, and we've spoken now to almost every we've spoken to every major gym operator in the United States and in Europe, and a lot of individual uh studio owners and operators as well. And what we have found that the athletes are looking for is in many ways the things that make high rocks unique. They're looking for community, they want to have a like-minded community that brings the same energy that's at the race in everyday training. They want to have an environment that feels like it is built for this type of training. It's it's it's motivational, it's got sort of the same look and feel. They want the equipment that replicates the right the race. So it's not it's not just using random commoditized products, but it's the products that were intentionally built for the race, making sure they're training on what they're gonna use on race day, and then the programming that that somebody knows what they're doing, so that the coaching and the programming that they're experiencing in that environment is helping them benchmark themselves, get stronger, get faster, benchmark again, get stronger, get faster. And this isn't a one and done thing. This is a perpetual reality. And so those that get in early have found not only did it help with acquisition, because they became known as, yeah, if you want to train for high rocks, is a place to come. It also, and then then and then high ROCs athletes bring in other high rocks athletes. That's just a reality. Like so once the once the flywheel starts, that flywheel grows and gets stronger. And then for retention, when and by the way, this doesn't mean everyone at the gym is going and competing. It could be that a subset, 10%, 20% are competing. But when that 10 and 20% comes back, and they've got all the photographs and the stories and the times, all it ends up doing is motivating the flywheel more and more. And so that adds to retention. That adds to people being like, yeah, I wasn't really confident enough to do it last year, but I'm gonna do it this year. And so now you're looking at a multi-year flywheel uh that's happening. And then then the high ROX engine is throwing gas on that fire. So New York City, I think, was maybe 10,000 athletes the first year, 25,000 athletes the second year, 50,000 athletes the third year. I can only imagine what next year will be. And so that flywheel of demand is growing. And in this next year, I think in the United States alone, they're gonna go from 10 cities to 20 cities. So they're gonna double the metropolitan footprint in the United States such that it's pretty much almost every major metropolitan area of the United States will have a high ROX event or be within two hours driving of a high ROX event. So it's it's it's here, right? So you've got demand generation coming from high ROCs. You have a growing need for supply. And so the ones that jump in early, they're they're just they're just capturing the supply. They're just they're just providing, right? They're like, we're the place to come. So I think that's and we've seen growth curves. I've seen membership curves uh for gyms that have that have shown it, like just a constant up into the right growth curve over the span of a 15, 18 month uh trajectory to get to a point where they're in wait lists for wait lists for class, wait list for spots in the gym because they max out.

Yeah, you know, we're gonna talk to someone from High Rocks uh in another episode of this about the actual affiliate, like what it means to be affiliate, like the head affiliates. We're gonna talk to a gym owner who's all in, right? So we're gonna get into that too. How does center, how does your your business and company and your team come in and support these gyms when they decide, like, hey, I want to either put a foot in or I want to go all in?

Yeah. So we we want to get to know either the gym chain or the gym owner or you know, studio owner to understand what are they, what do they offer today in terms of what's their approach, what's their programming, what's what's their perspective on environment, equipment, all that. And then we we bring in what we've found to work, how to how to either insert in the element of high rocks into that environment to convert some portion. If somebody wants to convert the whole box, we can help them have that conversation. But we'll try to bring what we have found as best practices from now a large number of installations that we've done across the planet to each owner. And and we've seen it all. Like I we've we've rolled out completely dedicated high rocks training centers. Um and at the highest level, it's called a high rocks training zone, an HTZ. And that gets sort of elevated status from HIROCs when people are looking for a local, a local HIROX training center.

So they divert traffic that way, essentially.

Exactly. All the way down to somebody wants to put a corner in their gym that is effective for training, but they they don't want to, they only have a certain amount of space. And so we've we've we've really done it all, but it's it's being able to just have the conversation. Um, you know, we once we know what they want to do, we'll work with them to come up with the right solution. We're not gonna, it's not one size fits all, and we're gonna try and jam one solution through. It's it's really, you know, more bespoke than that.

You know, one of the uh I I talked to a gym owner uh who's been all in on high rocks for a long time. And you know, one of the things that he found was really impressive through you guys, which I think maybe undervalued because you could you pay a lot for this standalone, which is the the consultancy of like, hey, let's work the actual space, like the this the unique economics of the space. Like you guys will go in and help design and like you know, help people explain, like, hey, this is what a build-out could look like, depending on what your budget is. That alone, like just a standalone thing, is is it a big investment for most gym owners, like to get someone to do that. But you guys just kind of serve that up as part of the process, right?

Yeah. Yeah, we usually we'll do layouts, uh, we'll help think about where how the how everything could be laid out, how a class could be run in the space. Yeah, working with HyROX, HIROX has invested a lot of time and money into building what they call HyROX 365, which is a programming platform that creates class, they have classes created. They also enable custom class creation with a essentially a uh library of all of the approved movements and exercises that help with training. So it's it's how to bring as many assets and tools to operators as possible to make this as easy as possible for them to get going.

Yeah. You know, man, I I've been around this this business for a hot minute, and I've seen a lot of we are very prone to trends and fads and a lot of things. Like, you know, do you remember uh what was it, Web 2.0, and we were gonna have everybody was gonna be logged into like some you know fake universe and doing their fitness there. Remember that? That was that was a thing for a while, right? People started investing in that.

Your your fake, your fake, your imaginary world and your imaginary gym and your imaginary, I think, I think maybe taken to an extreme, people are like, I'm imagining working out.

Like that's the tokenization of all that stuff. It was and and and I think recovery had its moment. You know, everybody was starting to install recovery centers into their gyms. I don't know how that how that's panned out recently, but I can't imagine it's been a good ROI. This, on the other hand, from what I've seen and what I've physically experienced being at the very first New York High Rocks and talking to so many people who do it, you know, personally and professionally, people that I know. This isn't going anywhere. Like this is this is a this is a thing. Like I think people really need it. That's what I want people to understand. Like, just we're dismissing this as a fad, you can't.

So I think people need to get clear on the words, right? Trend, yes. Fad, no. Like, trend is a trend line, right? And a trend line is based on data that is real and done. Documented and clear on what it's doing. A FAD comes and goes and burns out. And so I've looked closely at the data tied to everything around this. And as you mentioned at the beginning, 100 cities, 100 plus cities with multi-day events, two days, three days, New York's case, nine days. And what I've seen across that platform is zero, zero cities out of more than a hundred cities in the world, zero cities have shrunk. So, so it you would think a fad would show a curve that goes up down in at least one city or two cities, zero cities. So the growth of this as a sport taking hold in every market, doesn't matter if it's Brazil, China, Korea, America, is showing a huge level of not just resilience, but growth. And I and I believe that it it it it tapped in the thing it tapped into was it gave a sport and a reason to train to more than 200 million people on the planet, right? Like 200 million people, if you had asked them before high rocks, hey, are you an athlete? Do you have a sport? No. Do you go to the gym? Yes. So why are you going to the gym? I'm going to the gym maybe to lose weight or maybe to get stronger, but there's no real clear goal. And now they all have a sport. Like they're like, I'm not working out of the gym. I'm an athlete. And I have a sport. I'm training for high rocks. And and we are in in early innings. Like this sport has been around for five years. Like this is that is nothing in the scale of sports. So I believe this is this is, you know, if you're not already in, you should look to get in because the demand is only growing. And if you decide to wait on the sideline and get in after that demand is being satisfied elsewhere, people will be educated that elsewhere is where you're supposed to go. And then it's really hard to change that behavior, right? Because if it's like, oh yeah, you know, that place down the streets where you go to train, that's what it's known for. That gets really hard to compete against.

Yeah.

Well, you know, um Traver Boehm and I opened CrossFit Pacific Coast back in 2008. And there was a couple of years where it was like, oh, what are we doing here? Right. And then around 2010, things starting to turn the corner. Just having the name on the front door, the phone started ringing, right? Yeah. We we outgrew. We had to expand, right? Another couple of years, we outgrew again. We had to expand to 5,000 square feet, right? Start personal training, start like, and it was that gym. As much as I think maybe I was a good operator or above average slightly, I have to say, like being on that wave made things a hell of a lot easier and allowed us to get into the community in a way where, okay, now we can start working with high school sports teams, right? We've earned that right. We have personal training offerings. Like, but that foundational piece, and that's why I think like it's not just an opportunity. Um I think for people who are on the fence and they're not at least picking up the phone or doing a little bit of research or calling in and they're, you know, a gym operator or owner, like this is a risk because you can get left behind really easily. And, you know, I'm trying to think of a good way to answer this question, but it maybe give us an idea from like uh an anecdote or an example of something that is, you know, a gym that has transformed, right, due to taking taking the leap.

Yeah, well, I mean, we've seen gym chains create sort of a box in box approach where they have multiple studios, like they'll have a Pilates studio and they'll have a spinning studio, and then they decided early we want a high rock studio. And and they so they jumped in. And they and it's interesting, right? So there's high rocks the race and high rocks the brand. And then there's high rocks in the gym. And and I think early on, people were kind of like, how do those work together? Like, how how does that work, right? What does high rocks in the gym actually mean? And those that jumped in early, what they quickly realize is that high rocks in the gym as a training methodology is this ongoing training that blends endurance and strength. So different, different than CrossFit, different than than a bunch of other types of programming. It's a very clear blend of endurance and strength that that has you moving really quickly between different movements. And so as a training methodology and a program, they quickly learned this is extremely effective. And that's just as a standalone.

Yeah.

Just as a standalone. And as it being extremely effective, it was extremely popular, right? Like, so people are kind of like, I'm stronger, I am faster, I am, I'm feeling better, I am looking better. All the things that are the reasons that somebody would go to a gym, they began to see through this box in box. I've, you know, we've worked with another uh another location in Southern California that was an early, early mover in training people for high rocks. They saw what was happening and you know, thought about it through the lens of what CrossFit had gone through. And they began training people for open, for pro. They began training some elite athletes. And so for those of you that don't know elite, elite athletes, the ones that are competing at the highest level, elite 15, are the ones that are vying for best in the world. And there's prize money and like like any other sport, like they are sponsored. You've got Nike sponsoring some of these athletes, you've got Adidas, Red Bull. Like this is this is legitimate. Like people are making money at the highest level of this sport, no different than any other athlete. So if that's the tip of the pyramid where athletes are making money as a career from high rocks, then you've got the base of the pyramid that's kind of like, I want to get better and better and better. And maybe, maybe I could be the tip of that pyramid and I could be making money as an athlete in this sport. And so that that is another sign of where this is going that pulls the whole pyramid upward. And so, you know, and that that that early gym that trained for open for pro for elite, I've seen their membership curve and it's very impressive. And and they've and it and it didn't just happen, like they were really good at recreating the environment, making it feel like high rocks. They're really good at nurturing the community so that the community felt like it was supporting itself, you know, and and and very like, you know, like I uh embracing that the whole of, you know, it doesn't matter if I'm an elite athlete or an open athlete, I want everyone to succeed and everyone to do well. So it was really like a team in a way. So it's and and and we've now we've now done it with a lot of different types of of gyms all around the world. Like there's there's some that lean more toward that team environment. There's some that are more individual, there's some that are personal trainers, there's some that, and it's it's you know, I think it's all similar because high rocks as a brand and high rocks as a movement is what's fueling it. And the people that when you walk into a gym and you see, oh, they've got the high rocks kettlebells, oh, they got the high-rocks bumper plates. Part of it's, you know, you someone could say, oh, well, bumper plate's a bumper plate. Maybe, unless there's an emotional response when you see it, where you're like, I'm home, I'm in the right place. And like at Disney, you you can't say an animated character is an animated character. Oh, it's like it's an animated bear. No, it's Winnie the Pooh. Like it's it's not just an animated bear. When you see Winnie the Pooh, you're like, oh, I have an emotional reaction to Winnie the Pooh. And that's that's no different than than what this is. This is when somebody sees something that they have an affinity for, a brand that has identity, where they're like, I'm identifying as a high rocks athlete. I'm identifying as a part of this movement, a part of this sport. When they see the element that is a part of that, they have an affinity, right? There's an emotional reaction to that. So yeah.

And uh as someone who's bought a lot of bumper plates in my time, not all bumper plates are equal right now. There's some real devices out there. Yeah, I've tried to go cheap and it always ends up costing me three times as much. You know, I I think something, and we'll we'll kind of close on this, but yeah, I'm just gonna use an example of Joey the gym operator, who is thinking, like, for what I've seen so far, is like you can still be you within this ecosystem, right? Like if you have a certain training methodology, um, you have a certain type of space, like you do small group, private, big group, whatever it may be, outdoors. Like you can still, there's enough, there's plenty of room to be creative and authentic within this space and have your own voice. And I think that's something it's not restrictive. You're not telling people like, hey, you got to do it this way, right? Here's the program, you got to stick to it. Like there's plenty of room to do that. So, you know, if you if you were gonna talk to Joey the gym operator, and you know, he's on the fence about this, like what's the pep talk you would give him, and then what would you tell him to do next?

So I would say, Joey the gym operator, listen, your members are already in this world. Like this world is here, and you have members that are already in this world, and they're gonna be looking for training. So, and honestly, they want it from you, Joey. They like they don't want to, they don't want to go find it somewhere else. They want it from you. And at the same time, there's members that you don't yet have that are also in this world that you could get. And so many of the of the gym mod so much of the gym model is how do you lower the price to drive volume? And that is a race to the bottom, right? That does that does not create a large profitable business. So here's an opportunity to offer something that is actually value add, not reducing price to drive membership. And the opportunity is there. Like you, you wait, you wait years, decades for something like this to happen in the fitness category, and it's now here. Like it is it is here, it's growing faster than anything else that's come before it. And it you can wait. But if you wait, I worry, Joey, your members are gonna go elsewhere. And to get them back is gonna prove to be very difficult because you won't be viewed as the authentic solution at that point. So, and I and I honestly, to your point, the investment actually isn't that large when you compare it to like fitting out a whole gym with really high-end expensive treads and massive cardio area. This is a very, I think, you know, reasonable investment that blends endurance and strength in a in a hybrid functional fitness environment. And and you don't have to bet the farm. Like there's there's ways to get into this without betting the farm. So, you know, look to what's happening and look at how do you increase acquisition, how do you increase retention, how do you jump on what is become one of the biggest things in the world, and uh and then pick up the phone and call us. Right on.

We'll leave it there. Andrew, it's always a pleasure, my friend. Yeah, always really good. I know you're super busy growing this thing. You're traveling all over the world, so I always appreciate it when you spend some time with me and chat about this stuff. So yeah, yeah, it's been uh it's been awesome.

Awesome, man. I appreciate it as always. Always fun to chat with you. And uh hopefully I'll get three more high rocks under my belt by the time we talk the next time. I gotta I gotta I gotta qualify for worlds in 2027. We'll see how we'll see if that happens. You're on a savage clip, man. You're uh you're crushing it. All right, Andrew. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks.