Ten-Time CrossFit Games Veteran Brooke Wells Found a New Race in Hyrox

• Brooke Wells competed at ten CrossFit Games before retiring from the sport in 2025, then took up Hyrox nine weeks later and finished second in her debut race in Boston alongside her twin sister Sydney.
• Wells cut her lifting schedule from six days a week to two or three and added three to four running sessions, splitting long endurance runs from short interval days to build the engine Hyrox demands.
• The longtime CrossFit standout says pacing, not raw power, decides a Hyrox result, and she now measures her body by what it can do rather than how it looks in a mirror.

A decade of barbells did not prepare her for eight kilometers of running between sled pushes

Brooke Wells crossed the finish line at her first Hyrox race and stood there confused. The event was over. No second day of competition waited for her, no third round of events, no hotel room to rush back to for a recovery meal and an ice bath before the next heat.

“I remember doing my first Hyrox and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re done for the weekend. This is so weird,'” Wells said.

For an athlete who spent a decade building her body and her identity around the CrossFit Games, that feeling of being finished after roughly an hour of racing took some getting used to. Wells qualified for her first CrossFit Games in 2015 at age 19, one of the youngest athletes ever to make the field. She went on to compete at nine more Games before retiring from the sport in 2025. Nine weeks later, she lined up for her first Hyrox.

From gymnastics floor to a gym membership her dad refused to buy

Wells grew up training gymnastics four hours a day. When she switched to track in high school, the one-hour practices felt light by comparison, and she missed the volume. She asked her father for a gym membership. He pictured a hangout spot for teenagers and said no. Instead, he told her to try CrossFit if she actually wanted to get stronger.

Wells was not thrilled about the suggestion. She went anyway, and something clicked in that first session.

“I was immediately hooked,” she said. “I just think it was so empowering, lifting weights and doing movements that I wouldn’t normally do.”

She had started CrossFit to get faster on the track. Four years later, at 19, she qualified for the CrossFit Games instead. Her twin sister Sydney trained alongside her from early on, and the two leaned on each other when classmates questioned why a teenage girl wanted to spend her afternoons under a barbell.

Trading a three-day grind for one continuous hour

CrossFit and Hyrox test fitness in almost opposite ways. The CrossFit Games spread 10 to 15 events across three days, and Wells described the format as a long weekend spent recovering for whatever comes next. Hyrox strips that structure away entirely. Every race follows the same blueprint: eight one-kilometer runs, each followed by a functional station such as the sled push, sled pull, wall balls or a farmers carry, for a total of eight kilometers of running woven through eight stations. The clock starts once and does not stop until the last wall ball lands.

Wells is careful not to call one sport easier than the other. CrossFit rewards short bursts of maximum output, the kind of 10 to 20 minute windows where an athlete simply has to hurt as efficiently as possible. Hyrox punishes that same instinct.

“You can’t go out too hot,” Wells said. “You have to know your limits, and know how hard you can push while being able to maintain that pace for an hour plus.”

That lesson showed up fast. Wells and Sydney signed up for their Hyrox debut in Boston on a whim, while the two were together in Hawaii, according to Sydney’s account of the decision. Once the entry was locked in, the sisters decided to actually train for it. Racing in the Pro Doubles division at the event, which marked Hyrox’s first stop in Boston, the twins finished second out of 106 teams in 1:02:39, eight seconds behind the winners.

Rebuilding a training week around running she never used to do

Making the jump meant rebuilding her weekly schedule almost from scratch. Wells used to lift five or six days a week, chasing heavier cleans, snatches and deadlifts. Now she trains CrossFit two or three days a week and runs three or four times, splitting her mileage between one or two long runs of around 70 minutes to build endurance and pace awareness, and separate days built around interval work.

“It’s been fun to change my training up,” she said of the shift.

Recovery matters just as much to her as programming does, and she is blunt that the routine that actually works is not glamorous. Sauna sessions, stretching, foam rolling, occasional ice baths and red light therapy all have a place in her week, but she credits basic nutrition and sleep as the two pillars everything else sits on. She also learned the hard way that timing changes everything. Wells spent months puzzled by afternoon energy crashes before realizing she had been hitting the sauna immediately after her morning training session. She now saves anything relaxing for after her work for the day is finished, protects roughly two hours before training as phone free time, and winds down at night with magnesium mixed into a chocolate drink.

Redefining strength after a decade of outside noise

Wells has spent years fielding comments about her muscular build, dating back to high school classmates who questioned her interest in a sport built around lifting heavy weights. Having Sydney training beside her made that noise easier to tune out. The two of them decided early on that outside opinions did not matter much.

“There have of course been times where I’m trying on clothes in a dressing room and I wish I was a little bit smaller,” Wells said. “But then I remember what my muscles can do for me. That’s what I love about the way I look. It’s all about what your body can do.”

That mindset carries into competition, too. When a workout turns brutal and her lungs start to burn, Wells repeats a private mantra: this is when it counts. She allows herself a moment of frustration after a bad event, then moves on to the next one rather than letting the result linger.

For newcomers intimidated by either sport, her advice stays practical rather than motivational. Start with an empty barbell or a PVC pipe before adding plates. Commit to just ten minutes and see how minute eleven feels. Show up three times a week rather than chasing sporadic all-out sessions. And do not expect to love a new movement immediately. Wells did not, either, until the sport she stumbled into by accident became the one she has spent her adult life mastering, first with a barbell, now with a stopwatch and a pair of running shoes.

Wells and Sydney are staying in that hybrid lane together. The twins are opening a six week training program to the public later this month, a sign that the sisters plan to keep racing, and coaching, as a pair.