The line between CrossFit and Hyrox isn’t quite as blurry as it might appear from far away. One’s a fitness race, the other’s an entire training philosophy. One is decidedly geared towards runners, while the other – despite ostensibly preparing you for anything – definitely has more of a bias towards weightlifting and gymnastics.

That being said, there’s still a lot of crossover. The average CrossFitter is going to be more than equipped enough to finish a Hyrox in a respectable time with nothing but their training in the box to back them up.

And one particularly gnarly CrossFit workout might have more Hyrox carryover than most.Enter: Clovis.

CrossFit Hero WODs are workouts dedicated to servicemen and women who have lost their lives. They’re generally designed to be heavier, meaner or considerably longer than your standard CrossFit fare. And Clovis stands out as potentially one of the longest among them.

Named in honour of U.S. Army Second Lieutenant Clovis T. Ray, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in March 2012, Clovis is simple on paper, because it consists of just two movements:

The ‘Clovis’ Workout

For time:

10-mile run

150 burpee pull-ups

Note that I said simple. Not easy.

You can tackle the work in any way you like, but a popular approach is to partition it into 10 rounds of:

1-mile run

15 burpee pull-ups

It’s this run/resistance/repeat format that makes Clovis look suspiciously like a sneaky bit of Hyrox prep.

A Hyrox race sees you running 1km before hitting a functional fitness station, then repeating the process eight times. Clovis asks you to do essentially the same thing – run, work, run, work – while attempting to keep your pace from falling apart as fatigue accumulates.

The movements have some crossover, too.

Burpee pull-ups are going to prepare you for at least half of the movement pattern you’ll encounter during the burpee broad jumps, while the pull-up portion develops the type of upper-body pulling strength and endurance you’re going to need when you get your hands on the sled pull, as well as a dose of grip training ahead of those farmer’s carries.

Is it an exact match? No. Is 10 miles considerably more than the 8km you’re required to run in Hyrox? Absolutely.

But it doesn’t mean it won’t build the same capacities.

Clovis is a big mixed-modal endurance workout. It forces you to repeatedly find your running legs after taxing your full body with resistance movements, maintain your pace deep into fatigue and manage a workload that’s long enough to punish anyone who comes out of the gates too hot. All useful skills when race day rolls around.

If you’re a budding CrossFitter looking to retain your CF card while simultaneously prepping for a Hyrox, Clovis is definitely worth throwing into the mix.

But if the full workout feels unnecessarily… long, there’s a scaled version I call ‘Metric Clovis’, which brings the overall volume down while moving the stimulus even closer to Hyrox.

The ‘Metric Clovis’ Workout

Do 10 rounds for time:

1km run

15 burpee pull-ups

That gives you a total of 10km of running and 150 burpee pull-ups, with the 1km intervals providing an almost perfect rehearsal for the rhythm of a race.

However you choose to tackle it, Clovis is a serious endurance workout that’s not to be trifled with. And that’s exactly why you should do it.

If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.

Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? CLICK HERE to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.