XENOM vs Hyrox vs CrossFit:
Fixed Events and EPI Scoring, Explained

What is XENOM?

XENOM (pronounced "zee-nom"), branded "The Decathlon of Fitness", is a new competitive fitness series built around a fixed 10-event format contested over two days. It tests three things at once — maximal strength, gymnastics, and aerobic capacity — and, crucially, it uses the same ten events at every competition, everywhere.

That fixed-format idea is the whole point. Like the track-and-field decathlon, you always know what you're training for, and your result is measured against a constant standard rather than a workout that changes every year. Athletes are scored on a cumulative points index — the Elite Performance Index (EPI) — that follows them across events, cities and seasons.

According to XENOM, it launched in February 2026 with serious backing: a $15M seed round led by WndrCo — the venture firm of DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg⁴ — Rogue Fitness as equipment partner, and an official CrossFit "Partner Event Series" license (one of CrossFit's standing event-licensing tiers, so the brand is licensed, not run, by CrossFit).⁵ The first-ever competition runs June 27–28, 2026 at The Star in Frisco, Texas (the Dallas Cowboys' facility), with a London stop following in August. Season 001 is planned as eleven competitions across the US and Europe.

Who's behind it. XENOM was founded by Keith Barlow, a British CrossFit Level 2 trainer who co-owns the fitness PR agency Fittest PR — the agency, founded by his wife Kate Burton-Barlow, whose long-standing clients include HYROX.⁶ In other words, the person building the "CrossFit answer to Hyrox" also helps run Hyrox's public relations. It's worth holding that in mind when you read his side-by-side claims about the two formats: take them as an insider's pitch, not a neutral verdict.

Why "XENOM"? There's no hidden meaning. Barlow says the "X" stands for the ten events (the Roman numeral X = 10) and that the name was chosen mainly to be distinctive and ownable; he calls the popular "Hyrox + rockstar" backronym a myth.³

XENOM vs Hyrox vs CrossFit, at a Glance

All three test "fitness", but they reward different athletes. The clearest way to place XENOM is between the other two: it borrows Hyrox's standardised, repeatable format and adds back the barbell and gymnastics that Hyrox leaves out.

In one line: XENOM sits closest to a fixed-format competition for CrossFit-style athletes. The moment you put a barbell and muscle-ups back in, you're talking to a different athlete than the one a Hyrox race attracts — and a smaller, more skilled field.

The founder draws the line bluntly: adding a single 1-rep-max snatch, Barlow says, "instantly eliminates 95% of the people who do a Hyrox."³ His own analogy for where the two sit: if Hyrox is the marathon of fitness, XENOM is the Ironman — the bigger, more demanding, remember-it-forever test.³

The 10 Events

The lineup is fixed and identical at every competition, split over two days. As of June 2026 all ten events are revealed; the loads shown are the published Elite/RX standards (scaled "Compete" loads are lighter). Each card reads like a gym whiteboard — the workout up top, then the real elite result from the Dallas champions.

Day 1Events 001–005

Day 2Events 006–010

Read it as three threads woven together: a strength thread (001 snatch, 009 clean ladder, 007 Rhino Pull), an engine thread (003, 005, 008), and a gymnastics thread (002, 006, 010).⁷ Specialists get found out here: whatever thread you neglect, the events built on the other two will punish it.

Notice what's not in the lineup: no wall balls, no double-unders, no handstand walks. The events lean on movements that are simple to judge cleanly, which keeps reps unambiguous and the test repeatable across thousands of athletes — part of the point of a fixed standard.

How EPI Scoring Works

This is where XENOM borrows from track and field. Each event is scored on the Olympic-decathlon points formula: an elite-benchmark performance is worth 1,000 points, and you can score above or below that depending on how you measure up. For example, the published Elite benchmark for the 1RM snatch is 153 kg for men and 105 kg for women — hit that, and that event is worth ~1,000 points. Those marks are aspirational, though. At the first event (Dallas, June 2026) the Elite field's real snatches ran from 73 to 144 kg, the 60-second Echo Bike from 23 to 53 calories, and the ski-into-run from 18:50 to over 27 minutes. Not even the winner reached the 153 kg snatch.⁸

Your ten event scores are summed into one number — your EPI — which drops you into a tier:

The appeal is a single, portable score: comparable across events, locations and time, so it shows where you improved and where you fell short between two competitions. Crucially, it's absolute, not relative to the field. The 1,000-point mark is a fixed elite reference: beat it and you score above 1,000, so a specialist (say, an Olympic lifter) could post ~1,150 on the snatch and still score poorly everywhere else. It doesn't reset when someone posts a new best, the way a world record still stands until someone actually breaks it.³ A clean 1,000 in all ten events would be 10,000 points, a ceiling nobody is near.

The first event shows how far off that ceiling everyone still is. Across the 228 individual athletes in Dallas:

Both winners set the first World Records — well inside World Class, but a long way from a perfect 10,000.⁸

How were the 1,000-point standards set? Not by feel: XENOM says it used statistical regression across a range of athletes, tested under NDA with elite competitors, plus historical CrossFit Games data.³

Which One Is for You?

None of these is "best" in the abstract; the right one depends on the athlete you already are. Pick by your current skill set and what you want from it:

• Choose Hyrox if you want an accessible, run-heavy benchmark you can train for without gymnastics or a barbell — and a huge field to measure yourself against. (New to it? Start with our Hyrox guide.)
• Choose CrossFit if you love high-skill variety, the unknown, and constantly changing tests.
• Choose XENOM if you already have CrossFit-style skills — you can snatch, you have muscle-ups — and you want a fixed, repeatable standard with a barbell and a score you can chase over time.

One reality check on XENOM: the gymnastics thread (muscle-ups, handstand push-ups, rope climbs) is a real skill barrier. If those movements aren't in your toolbox yet, that's a longer build than the strength or engine threads — and it's the part that most often decides the overall result.

Two more things to set expectations. First, XENOM isn't trying to replace anything: the founder is explicit that the CrossFit Games still crown "the fittest on Earth," and that the best way to prepare for XENOM is simply to keep doing CrossFit — it's pitched as the everyday CrossFitter's "Super Bowl moment," not a new world championship.³ Second, expect it to take more out of you than a Hyrox weekend: athletes who have previewed the events describe two days of accumulated fatigue, where the real test is managing recovery across both days rather than surviving any single effort, with rest days likely needed afterwards.³

And a fair caveat: it's brand new and unproven. Respected coaches have pointed out that earlier mass-fitness waves — Spartan Race, Tough Mudder — cooled after a few years, so whether XENOM becomes a fixture or a fad is still an open question.³

How to Train for It

Whichever you pick, the foundation is the same: a strength base you can express under fatigue plus a real aerobic engine. For XENOM specifically, two of the ten events are pure maximal strength — the 1RM snatch (Event 001) and the heavy clean ladder (Event 009) — so your barbell numbers translate directly into points.

A sensible structure for the strength and engine threads:

• Strength — build the snatch and clean off a submaximal, repeatable program rather than maxing out every week. Something like 5/3/1 keeps loads progressing while leaving you fresh enough to train the other threads.
• Engine — three of the ten events are bike/ski/run. A steady aerobic base (think Zone 2 work) plus some high-power intervals covers the 60-second Echo Bike sprint and the longer ski-into-run grind.
• Gymnastics — muscle-ups, HSPU and rope climbs are their own skill practice, best built with a dedicated gymnastics progression. It's outside what we coach here; a CrossFit gym or a dedicated gymnastics coach is the right address. But it's the thread that most often caps an overall XENOM score, so don't leave it to chance.

The fixed format hands you a planning advantage an unknown CrossFit workout never could: because the events don't change and each one returns a score, you can back-calculate where points are cheapest. If your snatch is worth, say, 600 points, ask whether it's easier to push that toward 800 or to claw back time on the 3 km run — then train the weakness that buys the most points.³

Frequently Asked Questions