Sometimes things happen in the Men's Health world that are truly difficult to explain without sounding like you’ve made them up.
UK Hyrox champ, Red Bull athlete and Men’s Health cover star Jake Dearden pulling a near 4000kg plane across the tarmac at Red Bull’s Hangar-7 in Salzburg is one of them.
On the run up to the Hyrox World Championships, Dearden set out to test just how much carryover there really is from the race’s 153kg pro sled pull to the sort of mythical feats of strength usually reserved for strongmen twice his size. ‘For me, the whole purpose of this project was to see how Hyrox helps me become a stronger athlete. To see how much I could pull’
The answer, it turns out, is: quite a lot.
The day started sensibly enough with standard Hyrox sled loads being pulled across specially laid turf on the aircraft apron, moving up to the men’s pro weight of 153kg. From there, the team doubled down, piling plates onto the sled until no more would fit, maxing out at 265kg. ‘That’s so heavy!’ came the call as Dearden dug in and got it moving.
But with the sled tapped out, the ‘obvious’ next step was of course to stop adding plates and start adding engines.
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First came a Formula 1 car. Technically heavier than the sled, yes, but Dearden admitted it ‘felt really light’ – wheels, aerodynamics and the fact F1 cars are designed to be absurdly fast rather than absurdly heavy all playing their part. Still, not many Hyrox athletes can say they’ve pulled an F1 car with their girlfriend sat inside it.
Then came the planes.
First, the Extra 300 LX – 656kg. Then the aptly named Cessna 337 Skymaster ‘Push Pull plane’, weighing in at 1.4 tons. Then a Bell 47 helicopter, mounted on a platform and coming in at nearly 2 tons.
And finally, the big one: a North American T28 plane weighing around 3.8 tonnes.
Yes, wheels make a difference. But, as Men’s Health fitness director Andrew Tracey, who was on hand consulting during the pull, pointed out, this wasn’t a World’s Strongest Man-style truck pull with Jake braced, seated or anchored. This was Hyrox style. No fixed point. No bodyweight advantage. Just an 80-odd kilo athlete trying not to get dragged forward by several tonnes of aircraft.
By that stage, the ‘weight in hand’ was beyond anything you could realistically fit on a sled.
The pull wasn’t exactly smooth. It took some coaching from Tracey and Dearden’s long-term coach Jon Bullough, a painful wrapping of the rope around Dearden’s waist just to get the plane moving, and a lot of small, powerful steps. Dearden managed to get the aircraft moving, dragging it around eight or nine metres before it finally stopped dead.
‘It was so slow and felt like an eternity pulling that thing,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get it moving again.’
Call it a failed full-distance pull if you like. We’ll call it a pretty convincing case that – despite protests from some corners of the training world – Hyrox strength has significant carryover
You can watch Dearden's full YouTube video of the events here
Sign up to the Men's Health Squad for access to Dearden's exclusive Hyrox training plan
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
