HYROX SkiErg and row: damper settings and pacing

Both HYROX ergs start at damper 6. The 2026/27 rulebook presets the SkiErg and the rower to 6 in every division, and you're allowed to change it as many times as you want.¹ Concept2 suggests 3 to 5 for most people.² The damper isn't a difficulty setting, so pick the number you train on and set it before you start pulling.

The SkiErg is station one, right after the first run, and the row is station five. Both are 1,000 m for everyone, from Women Open to Men Pro.¹

What the damper actually does#

The damper is the lever on the side of the fan housing. It controls how much air gets into the flywheel. Higher numbers let more air in, so each pull feels heavier and the flywheel slows down faster between strokes.³

Concept2 compares it to gears on a bike. It changes how the stroke feels, not how much work the monitor gives you credit for. The monitor measures how quickly the flywheel slows, which is the drag factor, and calculates your effort from that whatever the damper says.³ Ten isn't harder in the sense of "more points". It's a heavier gear.

That's also why the number on the lever isn't the same from machine to machine. Concept2 says drag factor ranges differ between ergs, and temperature, altitude and even dust in the fan housing change it. A 3 on your gym's machine might feel like a 4 on another one.³ At a race you're on an unfamiliar machine, so if you care about feel, check the drag factor on the monitor in training and again at the start.

The practical trade-off: lower settings suit aerobic work, and higher settings turn it into more of a strength effort that can tire your muscles before your lungs.³ In a race with seven stations still to come, that's not where you want to spend.

The rules for both ergs#

On the SkiErg, both feet stay on the platform the whole 1,000 m. Your heels can hang off the back but can't touch the floor. You can jump into the pull, as long as you land back on the base plate. When the monitor hits 1,000 m, you stay on the platform, raise an arm and wait for the judge to confirm before you step off.¹

On the rower you stay seated until the 1,000 m is done and a judge has confirmed it. You're allowed to stop, put the handle back and rest, feet in or out of the straps. The foot stretchers start at position 4 and you can move them before you begin.¹

Penalties are the same on both: a warning for the first infringement, then 15 seconds for each one after that. Getting off either erg before 1,000 m is a disqualification.¹

What good times look like#

These come from HYROX Bangkok 2026, men's Open. We pulled the result page of every man who finished close to 1:00, 1:15 and 1:30 and took the median of each erg, plus the middle half for the 1:15 group.⁴ Same venue and the same machines, so the groups are comparable with each other. They aren't a world ranking.

Two things stand out. The ergs barely spread. In the 1:15 group, the middle half of SkiErg times sat between 4:22 and 4:36, and the row between 4:32 and 4:48.⁴ And the gap between a 1:00 finisher and a 1:30 finisher is only about 36 seconds on the SkiErg and 39 on the row. On a 1:30 race, that's not where the half hour goes.

At the top end, the top 100 Pro men averaged 3:48 on the SkiErg and 3:56 on the row in season 7, against 3:57 and 4:13 in season 1. The top 100 Pro women went from 4:39 to 4:23 on the SkiErg and from 4:51 to 4:30 on the row.⁵ The authors list the SkiErg and the row among the stations with little or no improvement across seven seasons, while the running got much faster.

The SkiErg is usually the faster of the two#

Line up each athlete's SkiErg against their own row and a pattern shows up. Most people ski 1,000 m a bit faster than they row it.

SkiErg time minus row time

	Value (s)
Men near 1:00	-7
Men near 1:15	-10
Men near 1:30	-11
Top 100 Pro men	-8
Ken	7

Negative = SkiErg faster than row. Bangkok groups: median of each athlete's own difference, HYRESULT result pages, HYROX Bangkok 2026 men, computed by hybridAF. Top 100 Pro men: season 7 means, Rappelt et al. 2026. Ken: HYRESULT station cards.

The typical gap is 7 to 11 seconds in Bangkok and about 8 seconds in the top 100 Pro men's averages. In the 1:15 group, only 16 of the 62 men skied slower than they rowed.⁴⁵

So here's a quick check you can run on your own splits. If your SkiErg is slower than your row, the SkiErg is probably your weak erg, even if both times look "normal". The row leans more on your legs, and the SkiErg on your lats, core and body weight, which is roughly how Concept2 describes the two strokes.²

My race: 705th on the SkiErg, 140th on the row#

I'm the bar on the right of that chart. In Bangkok my SkiErg took 4:36 and my row 4:29, so I skied 7 seconds slower than I rowed.⁶ Out of 3,254 men, the SkiErg ranked 705th and the row 140th. HYRESULT's percentiles, which compare against all seasons of its data, put them at the top 70.1% and the top 22.4%.

By time, neither was a disaster. The SkiErg was 6 seconds slower than the median of the men who finished near 1:15, and the row was 12 seconds faster.⁴ The ranks look dramatic because the ergs are so bunched. A few seconds on an erg moves you a long way in the rankings. In the same 1:15 group, the middle half of wall ball times spread over a minute and a half.

The gap was there in training too. On 15 July I did five rounds of a 1,000 m row and a 1,000 m SkiErg with 90 seconds' rest, logged at 4:00 for each row and 4:40 for each ski. That's 40 seconds slower on the SkiErg over the same distance. I'd done that circuit three times in July. The race just showed it again.

Neither erg wrecked the run after it. Run 2, straight off the SkiErg, was 4:00, and run 6, after the row, was 3:56. The 1:15 group's medians were 4:02 and 4:15.⁶⁴

One plausible reason, and it's only a guess: running builds an engine that's mostly legs, the row gives the legs most of the work, and the SkiErg leans on upper-body endurance that running doesn't train. One race can't prove that. What the data does show is that a slower SkiErg than row is unusual, and it was true for me in training and on race day.

Worth knowing too: in Pro results, row time explained the rest of an athlete's race better than any other discipline, running included, once its own time was taken out.⁵ That's a correlation in elite fields, not a reason to row more than you run. But a good row tends to come with a good race.

Pacing 1,000 m#

Don't treat either erg as a sprint. In the only published HYROX simulation, average heart rate was higher on the stations than on the runs, 173.7 against 168.9 bpm.⁷ The ergs aren't a rest between runs.

Concept2's own HYROX advice: on the SkiErg, aim for your 5K pace, or an effort you could hold comfortably for 4 to 5 minutes, at 40 to 60 strokes a minute, and ease in rather than going all out on station one. On the row, use your 5K row pace at 24 to 32 strokes a minute, with the recovery about twice as long as the drive.²

If you think in splits, the monitor shows pace per 500 m, and the arithmetic is simple: half your target time.

Pick a split you've actually held for 1,000 m in training, straight after a 1 km run, and hold it flat from the first stroke.

Training the ergs for HYROX#

Practise them tired. A 1 km run straight into 1,000 m on the erg, then straight back out for another kilometre, is the race in miniature. Do it on the damper you'll race on, and note the drag factor so you know what that feels like.

If your SkiErg is slower than your row, give it its own sessions. One option is short repeats, such as 250 m or 500 m with equal rest, at your race split or a little quicker, so you learn the pull with your lats and body weight rather than just your arms.²

And keep the ergs in proportion. In Bangkok the ergs separated a 1:00 finisher from a 1:30 finisher by barely over a minute combined.⁴ The runs and the heavy stations decide much more. The split targets for sub 90, sub 75 and sub 60 show where the rest goes, and pacing the eight runs covers the runs either side of each erg.

For every division's loads, see HYROX divisions and weights. My full race, split by split, is in my first HYROX breakdown, and the rest of the series is on the HYROX hub. hybridAF is not affiliated with HYROX.