There's a question every serious Hyrox athlete eventually asks themselves: what am I actually wearing when I train?
The race-day shoe gets all the attention. Carbon plates, NITROFOAM midsoles, PUMA partnerships — every brand wants a piece of that conversation. But the athletes who consistently perform at the front of their categories aren't just making smart choices on race day. They're making smart choices every day in the weeks and months before it.
🔑 The Method Behind the Athletes
Nadine Novillo and Irina del Río — the first Spanish female pair to qualify for HYROX Pro Doubles — train their strength sessions in barefoot shoes at Next Level in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Their preparation is structured by QI Movement, and it's built on a principle that more Hyrox athletes are starting to understand: the shoe you compete in and the shoe you build strength in should serve different purposes.
The race shoe is optimised for output: responsiveness, cushioning that protects over 8km of running, grip on functional stations. You wear it when you need to spend everything you've built.
The training shoe is optimised for building: ground contact, proprioception, natural alignment under load. You wear it when you're constructing the foundation that race day draws from.
These are not the same job. And treating them as the same job is one of the most common performance mistakes in the Hyrox community.
🧬 The Science of Training Barefoot for Hyrox
The demands of Hyrox are specific and unforgiving. Eight kilometres of running, interspersed with eight stations of functional work — sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, wall balls, rowing, ski erg, sandbag lunges, farmer's carries. Every station either requires or directly benefits from foot strength and ankle stability.
When you train your strength sessions barefoot — squats, deadlifts, carries, lunges — several things happen simultaneously:
Intrinsic foot muscles activate. The small muscles of the foot that conventional shoes have been passively supporting start doing actual work. Over weeks, they get stronger — measurably. A 2025 systematic review confirmed that barefoot and minimalist strength training produces significant improvements in foot muscle strength and arch function in athletic populations.
Proprioceptive feedback improves. Your nervous system gets richer information from the ground, allowing it to organise force production and joint position more accurately. Squats feel more grounded. Carries feel more stable. You move with more intention.
Ankle stability builds naturally. Instead of relying on the structure of a shoe to stabilise your ankle, you develop the muscular capacity to do it yourself. In Hyrox, where fatigue accumulates across 8km and 8 stations, this capacity is the difference between strong execution late in the race and form breakdown.
📅 Building Toward Hyrox Tenerife
The Hyrox Tenerife race arrives in September 2026. For athletes across the Canary Islands, mainland Spain, and beyond, the preparation block is already underway.
A smart training block for Hyrox Tenerife builds in phases. Early in the block: volume and base. This is where barefoot strength work belongs — the unglamorous, foundational sessions that build the architecture everything else sits on. Mid-block: station-specific work and race simulations. Late block: sharpening, tapering, race-day rehearsal.
The athletes who perform best in September started building their feet in June.
🎯 What This Means for Your Training
You don't need to train at Next Level or be coached by QI Movement to apply this principle. The logic is available to everyone.
In your next strength session: try it in barefoot shoes. Start with bodyweight movements. Add load gradually as your foot adapts. Notice the difference in how you feel the ground, how stable your base feels, how your toe splay changes your balance.
It won't feel revolutionary on day one. Give it four to six weeks. Then ask yourself why you ever trained any other way.
The race starts at the start line. The preparation starts at the floor — literally.
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