The Rise in Competitive Athleticism

For the runners: Hackney Half.

There’s a tonne of yearly half marathons in London – some of the key ones being Royal Parks Half and London Landmarks Half.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s very cool running around London’s landmarks and big green spaces, but in my humble opinion, Hackney Half feels a lot more fun!

The start/finish area has a load of food vendors, fitness workshops to take part in and a 10/10 playlist, as well as plenty of comfortable areas for those waiting for people to complete the race to chill in!

For the first jump into comps: Hyrox.

Whilst Hyrox may look a little scary, it’s probably one of the best out there for those looking to have a first go at competitions. There’s a reason they call it the fitness competition for everybody!

Essentially, you can make it as hard or as easy as you want to. If you want to sprint around the running sections and burpee at the speed of light then you go for it! But if you want to take it slow, and go for a breezy row/ski and soak in all the vibes with the sole goal of simply completing the race, then that’s amazing too.

For the hybrid athletes: ATHX.

ATHX is made up of three separate workouts, each taking 20-30mins, with breaks in between to recover and refuel.

The workouts are made up of strength, endurance and metcon sections, so you can expect working up to 3-5 rep maxes, going for max distances within time caps and getting a major sweat on with burpees and dumbbell/sandbag fun.

Certainly not for the faint hearted, but for the lovers of a tough challenge!

There’s a lot of events that you can sign up to via a charity partner, like the half Marathons, or Macmillan as Hyrox’s charity partner, but the Battle Cancer challenge’s sole purpose is to raise awareness and funds for cancer charities through the delivery of its fundraising events.

As for the workout, it’s a high-energy team workout where teams rally to complete 20,000 reps across five challenging fitness stations, with several category options to suit different fitness levels.

For the CrossFit newbies: the CrossFit Open.

It you’ve just started out in CrossFit (or you’ve been going at it for years, l’d urge you to give the CrossFit Open a whirl! In summary, over the course of three weeks, three workouts are released for participants to complete either at a CrossFit affiliate gym or from your home gym.

There are three categories to choose from – RX’d, scaled and foundations, to ensure everyone can pick one that caters to their skill level.

It’s a great chance to challenge yourself, see where you’re at, identity skills that you might want to work on moving forwards, and more than anything a fun opportunity to build relationships within the Crossfit community.