The fastest way to build trust is to struggle together

Three people messaged me last week asking if they could still join our Hyrox group

For context, registrations for the race had closed almost a month ago. They were not asking if there was a way to get a spot. They were asking if they could train with everyone else.

They wanted to join the Saturday runs, gym sessions and the WhatsApp group.

At first, I found it surprising

But after thinking about it, I realised they were not interested in the race alone. They just wanted to be part of a group of people working towards something difficult together.

Hi, I am Arjun. I look after health and fitness for builders at Cars24

Over the last few months, I have watched our Hyrox community grow week after week. What started as a fitness initiative slowly became something much more interesting.

It became a lesson in how trust is actually built inside teams….

Most companies spend a lot of time trying to create stronger relationships between people. We organise offsites, team lunches, workshops and town halls. They are useful. People enjoy them. They create memories and give everyone a break from work.

But trust is a different thing altogether. It usually does not happen because people spend an evening together at a resort. I think It emerges when people see each other at their best, their worst and everything in between.

That is what I have been watching happen with Hyrox.

If you are unfamiliar with it, Hyrox is a fitness race that combines running with functional workout stations. Participants run a kilometre, complete a workout station and repeat that cycle eight times.

It’s super hard and you have to literally train for it for months. But when people train for something difficult together, they start seeing each other differently.

The colleague you only knew from meetings becomes the person who never misses a Saturday run.

Someone who barely speaks during work discussions turns out to be the loudest person cheering others on.

Someone who looks incredibly fit shares how difficult their first few weeks of training actually were.

You begin to learn things about people that would never come up in a meeting.

And the relay format has amplified this even further 

Four people participate as one team. Each person is responsible for a different section of the race, but everyone feels accountable for the outcome.

If one person struggles, the entire team feels it.

If one person performs well, everyone benefits.

That kind of interdependence is rare.

At work, responsibilities are often distributed across teams and functions, it it is not always easy to see how much one person's effort affects everyone else.

A relay race makes that visible immediately.

The sled does not care whether you are a manager (though we don’t have any)

The wall balls do not care how long you have been at the company

The clock treats everyone exactly the same

What matters is whether you showed up for training. Whether you prepared. Whether you are willing to keep going when things become uncomfortable.

When I look back at the strongest teams I have been part of, they all had one thing in common. At some point, they went through something difficult together.

Sometimes it was a demanding project. Sometimes it was an impossible deadline. Sometimes it was a problem that nobody knew how to solve.

Those moments revealed character. You learnt who stayed calm under pressure. Who stepped up when someone else was struggling. Who could be counted on when things became uncertain.

The trust that comes from those experiences is difficult to manufacture because it is earned rather than designed. That is probably why so many people wanted to join the Hyrox group even after registrations had closed.

They were not just signing up for a race. They were signing up for the experience of doing something hard alongside other people.

And in the process, built the kind of trust and camaraderie that usually takes years to develop :)