Hybrid Smash: the Garmin race timer that splits HYROX into segments

The sled has stopped moving, the athlete has stepped off the carpet, and for a few seconds nothing in the hall is timing anything that matters to them. They are walking through the Roxzone, the transition area between running and the workout stations, and somewhere on their wrist a watch is recording what it thinks is a very slow run.

That is the problem with racing HYROX on a general-purpose sports watch. A HYROX race is not a run with some exercises in it, and it is not a strength session with some running. It is a fixed sequence: eight 1 km runs, each followed by a functional workout station, with every transition counted against the clock. Most watch profiles treat it as one long activity, which produces one long, meaningless average. Hybrid Smash, a Garmin app from the Dutch studio Multipassionate, treats it as what it is: a sequence of segments, each with its own split.

Hybrid Smash is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by HYROX or its owner, Upsolut Sports GmbH. HYROX is a registered trademark of Upsolut Sports GmbH.

What Hybrid Smash is

Hybrid Smash, listed in Garmin's Connect IQ Store as Hybrid Smash for Hyrox, is a paid watch app (€9.99, bought once) for racing and training in the HYROX format. It has a one-tap race mode locked to the official race sequence, a set of training modes for building fitness across a season, and a detailed summary of every run, station and transition afterwards. Workouts are saved to Garmin Connect, and the last 20 stay on the watch.

It is the most reviewed app from Multipassionate, an independent studio in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In October 2026 it was at version 26.0, had passed a thousand downloads, held a 4.1 out of 5 rating from 41 reviews and ran in 13 languages. Its website, hybridsmash.app, hosts a full user guide.

The race as a sequence

A HYROX race starts with eight blocks of the same shape: run 1 km, enter the Roxzone, complete a station, leave the Roxzone, run again. The stations come in a fixed order:

1. SkiErg, 1,000 m
2. Sled push, 50 m
3. Sled pull, 50 m
4. Burpee broad jumps, 80 m
5. Rowing, 1,000 m
6. Farmers carry, 200 m
7. Sandbag lunges, 100 m
8. Wall balls, 100 repetitions

Weights vary by division. Running makes up the largest share of a typical finish time, which is why Smash Coach's long read on HYROX and running opens with the line: "Most of the race is running. That is the trap."

Hybrid Smash's Race Day mode follows this structure exactly. After a warm-up, which does not count toward race time, the athlete presses the lap button at the end of each segment, and the app moves from run to Roxzone to station to Roxzone and on to the next run. Every segment gets its own time. Everything is locked to official values except two settings: the target run pace and the run type. Roxzone timing has its own switch in the settings.

During the race the screen answers the questions an athlete actually has. A position indicator such as 4/16 says how far through the race they are. A preview shows what comes next, so the next station is never a surprise. A heart-rate gauge shows effort by zone. A segment timer runs, or the pace takes the centre of the screen if Prioritize Pace is switched on.

Pace you can read at race speed

Running pace is the number that most often decides a HYROX result, and it is the hardest to judge while recovering from a sled. Hybrid Smash turns it into a colour. A band under the timer changes with the gap between current pace and the target pace:

At a target of 5:00 per kilometre, for example, anything from 4:30 to 5:15 shows blue. A progress arc fills as the run distance or time is covered, and a single light vibration marks the moment the run target is reached, once per run. The design assumes the athlete can spare a glance, not a reading.

Training for a season, not a session

Race day is one day a year for most athletes. The rest of Hybrid Smash is about the months before it, and it offers four ways to train.

Eight training programmes follow the shape of a season, from base building to taper:

HYROX Sim runs the full eight-round race with every setting adjustable: race structure, training flexibility. Free Training builds the workout as it happens: after the warm-up, a picker offers the run and the eight stations, up to 20 picks per session, which suits open-gym sessions where equipment availability decides the order. Custom workouts fill three slots with self-designed sequences of up to 20 segments, saved automatically as they are built.

Every training workout can be scaled with five settings:

• Run pace, from 3:00 to 9:00 per kilometre in five-second steps,
• Run distance, from 200 m to 2,000 m in 50 m steps,
• Run type: Indoor, Outdoor or Cardio,
• Station distance or repetitions, from 25 to 150 percent, and
• Station weight, from 25 to 150 percent.

The percentages are applied to the official values for the athlete's weight class, which is the clever part. Hybrid Smash knows the classes: men's and women's Open and Pro, men's and women's Doubles and Doubles Pro, and Mixed Doubles. Set the class once in the settings, and 75 percent of the wall ball weight means 75 percent of the right wall ball.

Protecting the numbers Garmin calculates

A HYROX workout can quietly distort a Garmin's estimates. A watch that files a sled push under running may conclude that its owner has become a very slow runner, and adjust VO2 max and endurance figures accordingly. Hybrid Smash leaves the trade-off to the athlete, through three run types:

• Indoor runs use no GPS. Pace comes from the wrist accelerometer, or from a paired footpod such as a Stryd. The workout is recorded as running, with live pace.
• Outdoor runs switch GPS on for the most accurate pace and distance, at a higher battery cost, and are also recorded as running.
• Cardio runs are time-based: the run distance divided by the target pace becomes a duration, and no pace is shown. These workouts are recorded as a generic activity, so the station work cannot drag down running metrics such as VO2 max. Free Training always works this way.

Indoor and Outdoor give live pace; Cardio protects the running estimates. Which matters more depends on the athlete and the session.

The app's guide adds two practical warnings. Garmin's Auto-Pause has to be off, because it can pause the recording during slow movements such as a sled push and make the station look faster than it was. And for heart rate during station work, a chest strap is more reliable than the wrist sensor.

After the finish

When the workout is saved, the watch shows a summary: total time, aggregates for running, stations and Roxzones, and a lap-by-lap breakdown with heart rate for every segment. Tapping share opens the full breakdown on the phone, at a unique web address that can be bookmarked or sent to a training group. The workout goes to Garmin Connect with a sport type chosen to match the run type, and the last 20 sessions stay on the watch for review.

The split-level detail is the real product. The difference between a good and a great HYROX time is rarely one station. It is often spread across eight Roxzone transitions, a fading run pace in the second half and one station that takes much longer than it should. Seeing those as separate numbers is the first step to fixing them.

What to look for in a HYROX app for Garmin

Garmin's own multisport and strength profiles can record a HYROX-style workout, and some athletes build custom workouts for it. A dedicated app has to do clearly better to be worth paying for. These are the questions that decide it.

Four ways athletes use it

The first-timer with nine weeks to go. A runner who has never pushed a sled works through the programmes in order, from Base 1 to Taper 1, with station weights scaled down at first and brought up toward 100 percent as the weeks pass.

The doubles pair. Two friends racing together set their Doubles weight class once, so every scaled workout uses the right base weights, and they compare split summaries after each simulation.

The open-gym trainer. The sled lane is busy and the rower is free. In Free Training the athlete picks the next segment from whatever equipment is free, up to 20 picks, without writing a plan in advance.

The experienced racer chasing minutes. Their run splits are fine. Race Day's segment-by-segment summary shows where the time actually goes: a slow Roxzone after the burpees, and a farmers carry that takes far longer than it should.

Limits and fine print

Hybrid Smash is a timer and training companion, not a coach or a medical service, and its guide says so. A few practical limits are worth knowing:

• It runs only on Garmin watches, with no Apple Watch or Wear OS version.
• Weight class and Roxzone settings cannot be changed in the middle of a workout.
• Segments in a custom workout cannot be reordered; to change the order, remove and add them again.
• Free Training and Cardio runs do not show live pace, by design.
• The developer offers a full refund when asked within 24 hours of purchase.

From race timer to coach

Hybrid Smash times the session. The question of which session to do on which day, around a job, a padel league and a dodgy knee, is a different problem, and Multipassionate's answer to it is a different product. Smash Coach, built by the creator of Hybrid Smash, writes weekly training plans that balance HYROX-style race preparation with the other sports an athlete plays, and sends the sessions to a Garmin watch.

The studio's racket-sport apps, Padel Smash, Tennis Smash, Pickleball Smash, Badminton Smash and Ping Pong Smash, cover the sports many hybrid athletes refuse to give up.

Hybrid Smash is available from its Connect IQ Store listing, with the full guide at hybridsmash.app.