Amazfit and HYROX: how technology supports Elite 15 athletes

In Stockholm, Amazfit, a smartwatch brand, is supporting several Elite 15 athletes at the HYROX World Championships. We met these elite competitors to find out how technology supports them day to day.

A few months ago, I took part in HYROX Paris after just one week of preparation. It meant two hours of exertion, 1,800 calories burned and a week of sore muscles. These far-from-impressive results were largely down to a lack of training.

At the Stockholm World Championships, I wanted to understand how the world’s top athletes put themselves in the best possible position for this exceptionally demanding event, and the part technology plays in their preparation.

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What is HYROX?

Before getting into the details, a quick refresher. Created in Germany in 2017, HYROX is now the world’s fastest-growing sporting discipline. The reason is straightforward: anyone can enter the competition, with no qualifying standard required.

Its format is designed to be engaging, too. Participants must complete 8 kilometres of running, broken up by 8 functional stations (SkiErg, Sled Push, Sled Pull, Burpee Broad Jumps, Rowing, Farmer’s Carry, Sandbag Lunges, Wall Balls), all performed continuously. Only the weights change according to the category, from Open (available to everyone) to Pro (for experienced athletes).

The hybrid format is what makes the discipline so demanding. Success requires both strong running ability and command of strength exercises. A weakness in either area can derail an entire race. “You can run extremely fast, but without enough strength work, you will lose valuable seconds at the stations. And the reverse is equally true. Without endurance and solid running training, being able to push the sled efficiently will not be enough to achieve a good result,” says Jesús Carrero, Amazfit’s EMEA General Manager and HYROX’s official partner (see box).

Who is Amazfit?

Amazfit is the smartwatch brand of Zepp Health (NYSE: ZEPP), a health technology group headquartered in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. Established in 2015, the brand operates in more than 90 countries and equips millions of users across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. Its watches have received iF Design Award and Red Dot Design Award recognition.

In April 2026, Amazfit renewed an exclusive global partnership with HYROX (a registered trademark) following three encouraging years. No other brand holds this licence. The partnership covers smartwatches, smart rings, cameras, glasses and straps, alongside connected app experiences, HYROX-specific training modes and performance-data integrations.

Amazfit is also the official timekeeper for every HYROX event worldwide. The partnership builds on a relationship established in 2024, reaching more than 300,000 participants each season across the EU and US regions.

Amazfit watches include officially HYROX-certified training modes, Training Focus metrics aligned with the race’s demands, and branded competition tools. All without a subscription.

The Amazfit product range is structured as follows:

• Active: an everyday smartwatch
• Bip: for daily use and beginner athletes
• Cheetah: for running (the Paris Marathon champion wore the Cheetah 2 Pro during the event)
• T-Rex: for outdoor sports such as trail running and triathlon
• Balance: for hybrid sports such as HYROX

In Stockholm, Amazfit unveiled the Balance 3 and Balance Ultra, its two latest smartwatches aimed at HYROX enthusiasts.

Helping athletes find the right balance with Amazfit

Serious HYROX preparation means training two systems within one body. The champions we met in Stockholm had previously used Garmin devices and even Apple Watches. Yet they always felt something was missing. These watches primarily focus on running. Until now, athletes had therefore switched between wearables for running and fitness apps for strength work: two disconnected ecosystems that offered no overall view of what the sport demands.

“In hybrid training, the challenge is to capture and maintain the optimum balance between endurance, strength and speed training,” says Jesús Carrero. “The system we are building is designed to help athletes retain that balance by measuring training loads more accurately, optimising recovery more effectively, and accounting for a broad range of stress factors.”

In Stockholm, Amazfit presented what it calls the world’s first complete ecosystem dedicated to HYROX athletes: the Zepp app and the Balance 3 and Balance Ultra watches have gained features specifically designed for the sport. They are intended to address the three pillars for elite athletes: train, recover, progress. Then do it all again, over and over.

Technology for assessing training load

The first feature highlighted by the champions is Training Balance. After every workout, it automatically classifies the effort as strength or endurance and shows the balance between them over the previous seven days. Athletes can adjust their perceived fatigue level after each session, while the tool then indicates which types of training to prioritise over the following days according to the goals set.

“Over a typical week, I generally do no more than two or three truly intense sessions,” says Hidde Weersma, 2026 European champion and the first Elite 15 athlete to go below 53 minutes in an individual race (52:42 in London). He adds:

“I’m a strong believer in polarised training, which is why most of my work takes place in Zone 2, at low intensity. That is where I build my endurance base, while I use high-intensity stimuli only when they are genuinely needed.”

Training Balance therefore enables him to continually check that he is not drifting towards excessive intensity, and to make sure key sessions happen when his body is genuinely ready to absorb them. It is a way to optimise training quality while also helping coaches better support athletes.

Adapting training to everyday constraints to avoid injury

For elite athletes, injury is the greatest fear. HYROX is a discipline that places particular strain on the body, especially muscles and tendons. To reduce these risks, Amazfit has introduced Hybrid Charge, a tool that adapts to the constraints of everyday life. Even when it gives no obvious signals, the body is not always ready to cope with the intensity of training.

Hybrid Charge combines training load, activity outside workouts, sleep quality, work-related stress and episodes of illness to generate a single indicator. Users can also add information about nutrition, recent injuries, advice provided by a physiotherapist or coach, and fatigue caused by jet lag. AI then calculates the energy available for training at a given moment. The calculation therefore brings together objective data captured by the watch and the athlete’s subjective input. That covers the preparation phase.

Training by feel, without relying on guesswork

Using this information, athletes can build their training plan. “During hybrid sessions, I always try to do threshold running work first, while my body is still fresh. Only then do I move on to the HYROX stations and work under accumulated fatigue,” explains Hidde Weersma.

But a training plan is not about replicating a complete HYROX event. Drawing on data collected in previous races, athletes can create specific training sessions. For people who have never done HYROX, a HYROX PFT mode can establish their level before creating an initial training plan.

The major new feature of the Balance 3 and Balance Ultra is the inclusion of downloadable workouts matching the sessions most commonly used by athletes. These include simulations of the first and second halves of a race, threshold sessions incorporating stations, and two very different fatigue profiles that athletes must learn to manage separately.

Of the six athletes we met, every one of them said technology played an essential part in their preparation and training. Hidde Weersma explains:

“In the past, many athletes trained mainly by feel, but today, thanks to modern sports technologies such as Amazfit, we no longer need to rely on guesswork. I can monitor training intensity precisely and make decisions based on concrete data rather than simple perceptions.”

Knowing whether you are ahead or behind in real time

During competition, technology plays a secondary role for five out of six athletes. “I never look at my watch during the race,” said four of the six athletes we met. For them, feeling is essential, and their coach is there to guide them.

The others glance at their watch occasionally to confirm what they feel. “Sometimes I feel comfortable, but when I look at my watch, I realise I’m in the red. The watch therefore allows me to adjust my pace and control my effort,” explains Xavier Dufour, French HYROX doubles champion in Elite 15.

To meet these athletes’ expectations, Amazfit has developed HYROX Virtual Pace, a new feature that acts as a coach for those without one. Before the race, the athlete sets a target in the Zepp app. The app produces a full race plan with target split times for every kilometre, station and transition area. During the race, Virtual Pace shows on the watch exactly how far ahead of, or behind, that goal the athlete is, down to the second.

Emilie Dahmen, 21, the youngest Elite 15 athlete, experienced this during her qualification race in Warsaw in April. Under pressure, as it was her final opportunity of the season to qualify for the World Championships, she successfully managed her effort:

“I managed to stay calm under pressure and execute my race strategy almost perfectly. I started conservatively, preserving my energy for the final kilometres and stations, which allowed me to move up the rankings through the kilometres and stations until I reached a position that guaranteed my qualification for the World Championships.”

Post-race analysis to keep improving

Every athlete knows that progress inevitably depends on analysing previous performances. Until now, it was difficult for HYROX athletes to obtain accurate assessments, as no brand had fully adapted to the demands of hybrid sports. After several years developing more advanced, though still imperfect, tools, Amazfit appears to have found the right formula.

The Balance 3 and Balance Ultra watches produce a post-race analysis enhanced with comparative data from other participants in the same event. Athletes can therefore identify precisely where they lost or gained time compared with the rest of the field, then turn this into areas of focus for upcoming training.

“I regularly analyse data such as heart rate, pace, training load and recovery. It not only helps me plan training more effectively, but also gives me confidence that I’m moving in the right direction,” says Hidde Weersma.

With this data, athletes can adapt their training plans, nutrition, care routines and even their everyday habits. It is an endless cycle for athletes in a constant pursuit of progress. Technology-company engineers follow the same discipline, always searching for the latest innovation. Train, recover, progress and repeat.