At First Xenom Event, Enthusiasm Grows for the Future of Competitive Fitness

Dubbed the “decathlon of fitness,” Xenom held its inaugural event this past weekend. There was a lot of excitement for the competition, which shares some similarities with Hyrox and the CrossFit Games but is looking to chart its own path

FRISCO, TEXAS — CrossFit started out of a small gym in Santa Cruz, California. Hyrox held its first race at an exhibition hall in Hamburg, Germany. 

Xenom, meanwhile, launched at The Star in Frisco, Texas, a 12,000-seat indoor stadium that serves as the training facility and world headquarters for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

That contrast reflects the intentionality with which Xenom’s executives and investors are building.

Held this past weekend, the inaugural Xenom event drew nearly 400 athletes, with $75,000 in prize money awarded and a list of sponsors and brand partners including Rogue, Gatorade and Yeti. But more impressive than the numbers, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the air in Texas about what the future holds not just for Xenom, but for the entire competitive fitness market.

“I haven’t seen a group of CrossFitters more excited to do something than I have this weekend in a very long time,” Nic Johnston, the CEO of online fitness coaching company PRVN, told Athletech News during the competition. 

A New Type of Fitness Event

Dubbed the “decathlon of fitness,” Xenom is backed by $15 million in venture capital funding from Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Wndr, which invested in the concept earlier this year. It features 10 events over two days, with exercises that test strength, endurance, gymnastics and metabolic conditioning. Athletes are scored on a standardized, points-based index that will stay the same across future events. 

Founded by Keith Barlow, a PR executive who helped drive the success of Hyrox, Xenom aims to become a “global mass-participation competition designed to standardize and measure ultimate high-performance fitness at scale,” according to the brand. 

If that sounds like Hyrox, there are some key differences in the types of people the two competitions are geared toward. While Hyrox is going after the general gym-goer, Xenom is built for more hardcore fitness enthusiasts including, but not limited to, CrossFitters. 

Barlow told ATN he saw a white space in the market for a fitness competition that catered specifically to this highly enthusiastic cohort of the fitness community. He likens it to an Ironman triathlon for fitness. 

“There wasn’t a product specifically designed for the athletes who are doing metabolic conditioning, gymnastics and weightlifting,” Barlow explained. “There was a real opportunity to create a standardized product for them, and something that replicated, in some ways, Hyrox, but still catered to these consumers with a genuine and authentic product.”

An Obvious Relationship 

At Xenom Dallas, the ties to CrossFit were unavoidable. Most of the competitors had CrossFit experience, including big names such as Emily Rolfe, Olivia Kerstetter and Colten Mertens. The events that make up the decathlon — exercises like chest-to-bar pull-ups, hand-stand push-ups and Olympic lifts — are unmistakably CrossFit-esque. Xenom even holds a CrossFit Event Partner Series license, so CrossFit had a formal presence at the event. 

Barlow, himself a former CrossFit athlete, recognizes and embraces the synergies between the two concepts, although he assures they’re not competing directly against each other. While there’s a big crossover in the types of athletes the two brands target, he expects Xenom to become a sport in its own right.

“My consumers are Xenom consumers; they just don’t know it yet,” Barlow said. 

Still, there’s a big buy-in from certain parts of the CrossFit community about what Xenom can become. To build out his executive team, Barlow hired Wilson Pak, who runs CrossFit gyms and organizes competitions, as Xenom’s director of operations, while Chelsey Hughes, a former CrossFit Games competitor, serves as marketing director. 

“The CrossFit community hasn’t had a spark in the last several years,” Pak told ATN. “I’ve been running these events and gyms on my own, but I (could) only impact those small markets. I have now been given the keys to extend to a global community.” 

That excitement extends to Xenom’s brand partners as well. Fitness equipment giant Rogue, a longtime partner of CrossFit, served as the event’s exclusive equipment supplier. Rogue debuted its Air Rhino, a new air-powered strength training machine, exclusively at Xenom Dallas this past weekend. 

Rogue co-owner and chief sales officer Caity Henniger told ATN she believes there’s a gap in the market for a Xenom-style event. 

“This type of event has been needed in the space, for sure,” Henniger told ATN. “They’re not in Hyrox’s lane; they’re not trying to be in CrossFit’s lane, but there is definitely a need, or a want, from the everyday athlete of having something that’s repeatable, in a standardized format.”

Popular CrossFitters seem excited about Xenom, too. Rolfe, a six-time CrossFit Games competitor, said she thinks there’s “a lot of interest” around the event among athletes who may be looking for a chance to compete in something new. Xenom’s decathlon-style format is also a selling point. 

“I always wanted to do a decathlon in track and field, so I feel like this is the closest I’ll get,” Rolfe told ATN.

Can Xenom Make It Big?

For Xenom, the big challenge will be getting enough people to participate in a more specialized type of fitness competition. While Hyrox attracts hundreds of thousands of participants per year, the Germany-founded “world series of fitness racing” is significantly more accessible to ordinary gym-goers than Xenom. 

But Xenom believes it’s got a large total addressable market it can tap into, starting with athletes at CrossFit boxes around the world and extending to other workout junkies who’ve been swept up by the fitness-competition craze. 

“We know that there are roughly four to five million CrossFit consumers already in the global marketplace,” Hughes said. “Then you have, around that, a really growing hybrid (fitness) market. … So I think that the market can be much, much bigger.” 

Other brands are noticing the massive market potential for competitive fitness, too. New events like the Adidas-sponsored ATHX Games have entered the fray, while gyms and fitness studios have begun launching their own in-house competitions. 

To differentiate itself, Xenom will lean, in large part, on production value and bold branding. The event in Dallas this past weekend felt more like a sporting event than a fitness meet-up, with digital scoreboards and leaderboards, stadium PA announcers and ample seating for spectators. 

The goal, Barlow says, is to give people an experience they’ll never forget. 

“What happened in Dallas this weekend was bigger than a competition,” the Xenom founder said in a statement following the event. “Walk into that arena, and you feel it immediately, from the energy, the noise, the sheer joy of it. … Every person who walked onto that floor got to be the hero of their own story.”

This approach stands in stark contrast to CrossFit, which has gained cult-like popularity across the globe, but, according to insiders, has lacked the business nous to truly become a global sport. Key stakeholders from the world of functional fitness are hopeful that Xenom has what it takes to break through. 

“CrossFit was an OG club of hard-working people that don’t come from the business world,” PRVN’s Johnston said.  “And we’ve made a great path, but we need to take the next step of getting in front of mainstream audiences and the general public.” 

Xenom’s second event will be held in London on August 29-30, with additional stops planned for Miami in late December and Paris in 2027. In time, Barlow says the brand is aiming to host between 30 and 60 events annually, in markets including North America, Europe and Asia.