Farmers Carry & Sandbag Lunges: The HYROX Grip Survival Guide

Updated 2026-07-19 · 8 min read · Composite Athlete coaching team

Stations 6 and 7 sit back-to-back in the second half of a HYROX: 200 m of farmers carry, a 1 km run, then 100 m of sandbag lunges with one final kilometre and 100 wall balls after them. By the time you reach the kettlebells you have run 6 km and cleared both sleds, the burpee broad jumps, and the row. Neither station looks intimidating on paper. Together they decide whether your last 2 km is a race or a shuffle — because the carry attacks the one thing you cannot pace around (your grip), and the lunges attack the exact muscles you still need for 100 wall balls.

The standard

The farmers carry is 200 m with a kettlebell in each hand, arms at your sides. You may set the bells down to rest as often as you need — but you may not move forward while they are down. At the end of the station the bells must be set back upright; leave them on their side and walk off and you take a penalty. That is the whole rulebook, and it hides the real standard: 200 m is far enough that grip, not strength, decides how it goes.

The sandbag lunges are 100 m of alternating lunges with the bag across your shoulders — the rulebook requires the bag to be fully supported by you at all times. On every rep the trailing knee must clearly touch the ground, and you must stand fully tall — hips and knees extended — before the next lunge begins. No steps or shuffles between reps: you lunge from where you stood up.

Doubles teams carry the same loads and split the metres between partners however they like — both partners still run every kilometre — while Mixed Doubles uses the Men's Open loading and Relay teams race at Open loads. Loads and standards for all eight stations are collected in the free HYROX Station Standards tool.

Technique

Set your grip once

Chalk before you touch the bells. Take the handles in a full fist — deep in the palm, thumb locked over the fingers — and squeeze hard before the first step. Regripping mid-carry is how bells end up on the floor: every adjustment happens with the load swinging, and a moving handle is twice as hard to hold. If your grip genuinely needs a reset, that is what a planned set-down is for.

Walk fast with short steps

The carry rewards cadence, not stride length. Short, quick steps keep the bells quiet at your sides; long strides swing them, and swinging bells peel your fingers open one stride at a time. Shoulders packed down and back, ribs stacked over hips, eyes on the turn point. You should be moving at a brisk jog-walk — this is one of the few stations where moving faster costs almost nothing extra, because the limiter is time under grip, not effort.

Build a shelf for the bag

For the lunges, get the sandbag high across your traps and pull down hard on both ends of it. A loose bag slides toward one shoulder and twists you on every rep — the fastest lungers are the ones fighting the bag the least. And remember the standard: the bag stays fully supported by you at all times. Propping it on the barricade while you breathe is a penalty, not a rest.

Own the top of every rep

Knee clearly down, drive through the front heel, and stand all the way up — hips and knees locked — before the trailing foot swings through. The half-extension shuffle is the most common no-rep on this station, and it shows up exactly when your quads start bargaining. A clean lockout costs half a second; a no-rep costs the rep, the rhythm, and the judge's undivided attention for the rest of the station.

Breathe on a fixed count

Under a bag, breathing goes shallow without asking permission. Pick a cadence — one full breath at the top of every rep is the simplest — and hold it for the full 100 m. The standing pause at full extension is legal and it is where this station is survived: use it as a metronome, not an escape hatch.

Pacing: surviving stations 6 and 7

Plan the carry as unbroken. For most athletes 200 m at race load is within reach without a set-down once the grip work is done — and every set-down costs more than the rest it buys, because picking bells up from a dead stop is the hardest grip event in the station. If you know your grip will not hold, plan the break instead of reacting to failure: set down at a fixed landmark, stand still — no moving forward while the bells are down — take five slow breaths, and go again. One planned break beats three panicked ones.

Lunge pacing is simpler and harsher: a continuous metronome beats every stop-start pattern. The bag never gets lighter, and the standing rest at lockout is already built into the standard — so the athletes who post fast lunge splits are simply the ones who never stop moving. Do not race the first 25 m. The quads you torch here are the same quads that have to squat 100 times at wall balls, and there is no station left after the lunges to hide a mistake in.

Respect the kilometre between the two stations, too: legs full of carry, lunges waiting, it is the hardest run of the race for a lot of athletes. Running to pace off heavy stations — the same problem the sled push and pull create earlier in the race — is its own trainable skill, and it is the whole subject of compromised running.

How to train it

Grip responds fast to direct work — a few focused weeks is enough to change how the back half of a race feels. Run these three progressions in parallel:

Carries above race load

Once a week: 4 × 50 m at one kettlebell size above your division's load, 90 seconds rest. Heavier-and-shorter teaches your hands that race load is the easy day. Every second week, swap in 2 × 100 m at race load with a strict no-set-down rule. By the end of a block, 200 m at race load should happen without a thought — that is the entire point.

Timed holds and dead hangs

Finish two sessions a week with three max-effort dead hangs from a bar, two minutes rest between them — or three 30-45 second holds with kettlebells at or above race load. When those get comfortable, drape a towel over the bar and hang from that. This work is boring and it works: grip endurance is one of the most trainable qualities in the sport, and it is the difference between a carry you cruise and a carry you negotiate.

Lunges that respect the standard

3 × 20 m of walking lunges with a sandbag or dumbbells, every rep with a clear knee touch and a full stand-up — train the standard, not an approximation of it. Start near half race load and build across the block. In the final third, put the whole late-race block together as a brick: 3 rounds of 800 m run at race effort + 100 m carry at race load + 25 m of lunges. That is stations 6 and 7 in miniature, met the way the race serves them — already tired.

Stations 6 and 7 are where a HYROX stops being a fitness test and becomes an attrition test — the athletes who look strongest late are the ones who paid for it in carry and lunge volume weeks earlier. For where this work sits inside a full race build, start with the complete HYROX training guide.