HYROX farmers carry

Grouped by finish time rather than by labels like "competitive" or "intermediate". Find the row for the finish you are chasing and read across.

Doubles medians are closer to solo ones than at most stations. Partners split the 200 m, but each still carries the same load and the handover costs time, so the saving is smaller than a straight halving.

Two facts about this station point in opposite directions, and both are true. It is the smallest piece of a HYROX finish there is — 8th of 8 by share, at 2.7%, against 7.8% for wall balls. And it is 5th of 8 by field swing, which means it separates fast finishers from slow ones more sharply than 3 stations that are all bigger than it.

That gap between size rank and swing rank is the largest of any station on the course. It is a station that punches above its weight — but the third card is the one that keeps the claim honest. Because the times are so short, a 1.76× swing amounts to only 1:12 between the fastest and slowest brackets. The proportional spread is real and the absolute stakes are small, and any page that told you only one of those would be selling you something.

The tail is correspondingly mild. The 99th percentile is 5:14, 2.1× the median, and 1.38% of athletes take more than double it — 5th of 8. The slowest carry we hold is 16:21, about 7× the median, which is a catastrophe by this station's standards and would be unremarkable at several others.

Fast athletes are fast at everything, so raw station-to-station comparison tells you nothing. Removing each athlete's finish-time trend first leaves the useful question: does being relatively good at one station predict being relatively good at another? Most of this course answers "no", and several stations answer "actively the reverse". This one does not.

Every bar points the same way, and this is the only station on the course where that is true — every other one has at least one relationship pulling against it. The strongest are sled push at +0.303 and sled pull at +0.269 — the two sleds, which is the least surprising result on this page: three loaded stations, one underlying quality.

It is worth seeing what that looks like next to the opposite case. The burpee broad jumps have a strongest relationship of -0.157 — negative, against the sled push — meaning nothing in the race warns you about them and being strong may even point the wrong way. The farmers carry is the mirror image: a modest, positive agreement with all seven other stations. If you are relatively good here, you are mildly likely to be relatively good everywhere.

Keep the size of these numbers in mind. The largest correlation on this page is +0.303. That is a real, consistent signal and it is nothing like a prediction — the two ergs correlate with each other at more than double it. "The station that agrees with everything" means it leans the same way as everything, not that it tells you your other times.

200 m in every division, carrying one kettlebell in each hand. The distance never changes — only the bells do.

Women Pro and Men Open carry the same 2 × 24 kg. The Open-to-Pro step is +50% for women and +33% for men — moderate by the standards of this course, where the sandbag load doubles between the same two divisions.

Full loads for all eight stations are in the weights, reps and distances guide.

Accepted practice rather than something we have measured. We separate the two on every page so you can weigh them differently.

The useful thing to understand about this station is that it does not fail gradually. Most of the course degrades — you slow down, you break sets, you recover. Grip does not work like that. It holds and then it does not, and once the bells are down the time you lose is not proportional to how tired you were. That is the most plausible reason a station this small still swings 1.76×.

So the pacing instruction is unusually simple: start at a pace you could hold for 250 m, not 200 m. There is very little upside in going faster — the whole field is inside 1:12, so even a large improvement returns seconds — and a real downside in going too fast, because the failure is discrete rather than gradual.

It is also worth being clear about the training implication, since this is the last station guide in the set and the temptation is to treat all eight as equally deserving. They are not. At 2.7% of a finish this is the smallest thing you can work on, and the time available is measured in seconds. Do it well, arrive at the sandbag lunges with your hands intact, and spend your training weeks on the stations where the minutes actually are.

Want to see what this station is allowed to cost inside a goal finish? The pace calculator splits a target time into per-station and per-run budgets.

Mistakes and takeaways

The short version, if you skim nothing else on this page.

Common questions

What is a good HYROX farmers carry time?

Solo median is 2:29 for 200 m, with the middle half of the field between 2:05 and 3:00 across 39,247 results. Athletes finishing in sub-60 minutes post a median of 1:35; those finishing 90+ post 2:47 — a 1.8× difference, but only 1:12 in absolute terms.

How heavy is the HYROX farmers carry?

200 m carrying two kettlebells: 2 × 16 kg for Women Open, 2 × 24 kg for Men Open, 2 × 24 kg for Women Pro, 2 × 32 kg for Men Pro. Women Pro and Men Open carry the same 2 × 24 kg. The Open-to-Pro step is +50% for women and +33% for men.

Is the farmers carry an important HYROX station?

It is the smallest on the course — 2.7% of a solo finish, last of 8 — and the whole field is inside 1:12 between the fastest and slowest finish brackets. But it separates athletes more than its size implies: it ranks 5th of 8 by field swing at 1.76×, out-swinging 3 larger stations. The honest summary is that it is worth doing well and not worth building a training block around.

Does the farmers carry predict anything else in my race?

More than any other station, though still modestly. Removing each athlete's finish-time trend across 39,247 solo results, this is the only station on the course whose relationships are all positive — it correlates in the same direction with everything. The strongest are sled push at +0.303 and sled pull at +0.269, the other two loaded stations. It is the closest thing HYROX has to a general-capacity check, which is the exact opposite of the burpee broad jumps, where the best link to anything is -0.157.

How do I stop my grip failing on the farmers carry?

Mostly by starting slower than you want to and setting the hands up properly before you lift. Hook the handles in the fingers rather than crushing them into the palm, keep the shoulders down and the chest tall, and walk at a pace you could hold for 250 m rather than 200 m. If you are going to put the bells down, plan it for around halfway rather than discovering it at 170 m — a single planned break costs far less than a grip failure near the end.