How Sisu Fitness’ Inaugural HYROX Sim Event Drew 120 Athletes

How it Started

Sisu Fitness has been part of the Minneapolis fitness community since 2012. Oscar and Anna Nevermann took over the Plymouth location in 2024, building a physical therapy clinic inside the gym and expanding well beyond its CrossFit roots. Today, Sisu Fitness has three locations in the Minneapolis metro area, a PT practice, functional fitness classes, and a growing HYROX program.

Oscar came from Europe, where he’d watched HYROX grow faster than CrossFit did in its early days. When one of his coaches (Matt Wiitala) floated the idea of adding HYROX classes, Oscar didn’t hesitate. The affiliation fee was low-risk with no long-term commitment. Now looking back, the demand turned out to be real, and they’ve never looked back.

Sisu Fitness is also a PRVN affiliate, using both the functional fitness and HYROX programming tracks. So members can move between the two depending on their training goals or how their body feels that week.

The Win: Running a Successful HYROX Sim

Hosting a HYROX simulation event is becoming more prevalent at affiliates. Gym owners have discovered that it’s an effective way to engage members, attract new athletes, and build brand awareness locally. And since official HYROX races sell out quickly, sim races give athletes a training goal and an opportunity to track progress if they can’t attend a sanctioned event.

When Sisu Fitness considered hosting a sim, they decided to do something different.

For their first-ever sim, they rented Hopkins High School’s track and football stadium. They borrowed sleds and ski ergs from other gyms across Minneapolis, which Matt vividly remembers from spending 12 hours in his truck driving from location to location, picking up all the gear. And they built out a full race experience with singles, doubles, and a half-HYROX option. 

With it being an inaugural event, they only expected the turnout to be decent. For context, Sisu has hosted a CrossFit Summer Throwdown for the last decade, which has grown to include about 100 athletes.

So imagine their surprise when the first-ever HYROX simulation event drew 120 registrants, many of whom had never heard of Sisu Fitness before. People traveled from Duluth, Forest Lake, and even other states like North Dakota.

For 2026, the second-annual HYROX sim is scheduled for September 20th, once again at Hopkins High School. Sisu Fitness is going big, aiming to host 300 athletes.

How Gym Owners Can Repeat This Win

If you’re a HYROX affiliate and have been thinking about hosting a sim event, here are some tips from Oscar and the Sisu Fitness team:

• If possible, host the event off-site. Your gym floor might work for a regular class, but a place like a high school track gives athletes the real race experience and allows for significant attendance.
• Offer accessibility tiers. The half-HYROX option brought in athletes who wouldn’t have signed up for the full race. The more accessible your sim is, the more people you can get through the door.
• Borrow equipment, at least for year one. You don’t need to own every piece of equipment needed to host a large number of athletes. Build relationships with other gym owners first and test the success of your inaugural event before you buy.
• Treat it as a benchmark, not a one-off. At Sisu Fitness, the Half-HYROX is a recurring benchmark workout. Athletes record their times in Wodify Perform and track progress over time. That turns a single event into an ongoing reason to stay engaged.
• Motivate long-term members. As Oscar explained, people who’ve been coming to the gym for years can start to go through the motions. A sim event gives them a new training goal. And he’s noticed that new HYROX members coming in to prep for their first race raise the energy for everyone.
• Connect the community. At Chicago HYROX 2025, more than 46 Sisu Fitness members traveled together to race and cheer each other on. Two of them qualified for worlds in Stockholm. That kind of community doesn’t happen by accident, but adding HYROX gave it a new fuel source.
• Recap the wins and areas for improvement. After the 2025 sim, Oscar realized he had a few things to improve: clearer running entry/exit points, better station signage, sled setup. Athletes will notice when a well-organized event runs clean. So taking the time to do a post-event evaluation to note these details is what gets people to come back.

How Wodify Helps Sisu Fitness Win

Sisu Fitness has been a Wodify client for nearly 10 years. When they added HYROX, they didn’t need a new system because Wodify handled it.

For coaches, the day-to-day value is straightforward. They can open the Wodify app on their phone and easily handle everything from check-ins to drop-ins and retail sales.

For members, Wodify Perform is where they track their Half-HYROX times and measure progress from one benchmark to the next. When an athlete can look back and see they’ve cut four minutes off their time from February to May, that’s the kind of data that keeps people motivated and coming back. It’s also simple for them to sign up for classes, access class programming, and update billing or profile info without any hassle.

Oscar said, “We really appreciate what Wodify does for us here at Sisu Fitness. Their systems integrate well with HYROX, and our members really appreciate how it makes it easy for them to track their workouts and use it to improve their performance.”

If you’re not a Wodify customer yet, book a demo with our team today!

To learn more about Sisu Fitness, visit the website here.