Xenom has raised $15 million and calls itself the “decathlon of fitness”. That’s the headline but it’s not the most interesting thing about the latest addition to the competitive fitness calendar.
Xenom is a new global fitness competition designed to test all-round fitness across a standardised format. What really stands out is how Xenom founder Keith Barlow got the project off the ground.
Before fitness, Barlow was in energy finance (family offices, private equity) learning, in practical terms, what scales and what doesn’t. He wasn’t immersed in gym culture. He was evaluating markets, capital flows and the difference between attention and adoption.
His entry into fitness came later, through Fittest PR, the agency founded by his wife Kate, where he worked alongside entrepreneurs building some of the world’s fastest-growing brands. Founders like Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste from Hyrox and Max Clarke and Lestat McCree from Healf, which recently topped 2026 Sifted 100 list of fastest-growing companies in the UK and Ireland.
From that vantage point, he saw the industry differently: not from the inside out, but from the outside in. What cut through, what stalled and what people actually paid for.
Most fitness concepts are built the other way round; culture first, business later. Xenom flips the model. The result is a competition designed not just to be completed, but to be watched and followed. Mass participation, in-person, structurally closer to sport than to training. Something that can hold attention as much as it demands effort.
At a time when health is being pulled towards AI, automation and isolation, Xenom moves in the opposite direction. It’s a bet that shared, physical experience will become more valuable, not less, as everything else becomes individual and digital.
“I had a life before fitness and a life after,” Barlow told us. “And the one after is much, much better.” That’s a personal line. But it’s also the heart behind the brand.
What is Xenom?
Xenom is a 10-event fitness competition that tests strength, endurance and skill across a structured, two-day format. Described as a “decathlon of fitness,” it combines weightlifting, conditioning and gymnastic movements into a single, cumulative points-based competition.
How is Xenom different from Hyrox or CrossFit?
Where Hyrox leans heavily on running and endurance, and CrossFit constantly varies its events, Xenom combines fixed, repeatable events with weightlifting and more technically demanding movements, such as muscle-ups.
The aim is consistency. A format that can be standardised across locations and over time, making performances easier to compare and the competition itself easier to follow.
How does a Xenom competition work?
Xenom is a two-day, 10-event fitness competition combining strength, endurance and gymnastic skill. Events range from a one-rep max snatch and heavy clean ladder to conditioning tests like Echo Bike sprints, SkiErg efforts and mixed-modality AMRAPs.
Athletes compete across all events, with cumulative scoring determining overall rankings, rewarding consistency across multiple domains rather than a standout performance in a single event.
When and where are Xenom events held?
Xenom has launched with 11 events globally, starting in Dallas on June 27–28, 2026. The opening competition will take place at The Star in Frisco, home of the Dallas Cowboys, with around 2,000 athletes expected to compete.
Further events are already lined up for London, Paris and Miami, with additional locations to follow as the series expands internationally.
Why is Xenom gaining attention?
Xenom reflects a broader shift in fitness towards competitive, event-driven formats that combine participation with entertainment, a trend seen in the rise of Hyrox, AthX and F45’s Peak 500.
Inside Xenom: the startup trying to standardise fitness
Keith Barlow on building a global competition format, learning from Hyrox, and why simplicity—not variety—wins at scale
When you’re looking at the Xenom events, what would you most look forward to, and what would you fear most?
I 100% fear the 60-second echo bike. For anyone that’s ever done that, that is the most brutal test in 60 seconds.
The whole concept of the decathlon of fitness is that we test broad work capacity across time and modal domains.
I think especially in the way that fitness is understood at the moment, people are very into this longer, more Zone 2, more Hyroxy, more endurance-based fitness, and that’s obviously an incredible part of fitness, but it’s only one narrow expression of it.
If you go to the other end of the spectrum and you go for a 60-second flat-out echo bike effort, if you’ve never tried it before, that’ll put you on your back really badly.
Humbling. So, what caused the biggest discussion or disagreement when finalising the events?
I would say that the most controversial workout is the muscle-up workout.
If you look at any other competition in our space, and especially in the format of fitness racing that is now the vogue, which we 100%, to be clear, are not a fitness race, gymnastics is obviously the thing that hasn’t been tested at all and is a core part of CrossFit (with whom Xenom has partnered).
So in our muscle-up workout, you do three rounds of 15 toes-to-bar and 15 double dumbbell hang snatch into 10 bar muscle-ups into 10 ring muscle-ups or an AMRAP of ring muscle-ups.
You can fall into the trap of trying to become too appealing for everyone and then not actually appealing to your base.
And so when we designed the toes-to-bar muscle-up workout, there was probably a thought of, “Should we make this a little bit easier?” And we have an easier version, we have a compete version which is designed for a lower level or a more attainable level, but we still wanted to be able to test that super high end.
Something very interesting you said there: not a fitness race.
100% not a fitness race. I don’t have anything against them. I am very good friends with Christian and Mo from Hyrox. I’ve spoken to them a lot about this product and the route I wanted to go down.
Fitness racing tests a very narrow expression of fitness, which is power output denominated, which is how fast can you run and how well can you do these relatively simple movements.
The people that we have built this for – the CrossFitters – have this very broad, very wide expression of fitness.
And so when CrossFitters go and do a fitness race, when they go and do a Hyrox, they test one very specific aspect of their fitness and they don’t test the whole thing.
So how do you describe it?
It is the decathlon of fitness. That is the description. So it’s Xenom, the decathlon of fitness. It’s a two-day competition with 10 individual events within it that map human physical capacity.
You mentioned that you spoke to the Hyrox founders. What wisdom did they pass on?
Well, prior to launching Xenom, we ran Fittest (a PR and media agency) and still continue to run Fittest. Fittest is still Hyrox’s PR agency, so I still speak to them a lot.
They would probably look at what I’m doing and say, “Wow, that’s really complicated. You should turn that into a fitness race.” That would probably be their main piece of advice.
But I also think it’s reductive when people start to compare the two things as though they have to be in competition with each other, because I genuinely think they’re not, in the same way that I don’t think marathon and Ironman are in competition with each other.
I definitely learned a lot from them in terms of these businesses are basically two businesses. There’s a marketing arm, which is the front face of the business that everyone sees. It’s the sport, it’s the athletes, it’s the social media.
And then there’s a second business, which is a really, really complex operations and logistics model where you’re moving millions of pounds of steel all over the world, setting up huge events on the Taylor Swift model of fitness.
On the marketing side, you’ve had a ringside seat on fitness and what’s been happening through your role in Fitness PR. What are the key takeaways from that experience?
I think it’s clear that in-person physical experiences that are tied towards competition are just an absolute superpower at the moment.
I think people are so eager to be connected to their physical selves in a way that also disconnects them from the digital world that those opportunities are huge.
I think that the fitness space is increasingly – you don’t even think of it as the fitness space. It’s so deeply tied into wellness and lifestyle and luxury culture. I think fitness is kind of the new luxury space.
We see so many, even now for Dallas, the first event in June, we’re already seeing people from the UK, people from Ireland, people from France saying, “I’ll come over for a fitness holiday to the US. I’ll do the flights, I’ll do the hotel, I’ll compete with you for two days, and then I’ll have my three days in Dallas and go and explore the culture.”
That’s the way that people are increasingly looking to experience the world.
From a marketing, from a PR, from a total perspective in terms of your ability to tap into culture, it means that we’re no longer limited to, “How do I get Men’s Health interested in this?” or the very specific fitness space.
These events now have such cultural crossover and such weight into lots and lots of different areas.
It also seems like some brands have been able to foster an irrationally deep attachment from their participants or customers. Why does that happen for some brands and not others?
I think that there has never been more opportunity for brands to connect more to their consumers, but there’s also never been more of an opportunity for consumers to be sceptical or critical of brands.
I think that authenticity is the power now.
If you’re a brand that every five years is making a pivot from padel into running into hockey into, “It’s the Olympics, let’s do that,” I think that inauthenticity is so easy to pick up on now by a consumer, because they’re connected 24/7.
Whereas if you are genuinely authentic in the space that you’re in and you are 100% committed to whatever it is, then it’s so easy to build cult followings for brands that previously would have taken decades to build.
Now, because consumers have such 24/7 access to brands, you can build that cult following not overnight, but with authenticity in six months to a year.
You can look at some of the cult brands that are popping up in running and stuff that never existed before and suddenly are eating the big established brands’ breakfasts.
What will you do to try and create your own cult following?
We won’t use the C-word. With events like ours, it is all about in person. I think that’s where you create real resonance for people.
Social media is obviously a key thing, but that’s not where you really connect with people.
So for us, in Dallas, we will be coming to 50 gyms over the course of three months, running Xenom sessions in person, meeting the local community, meeting the people out there. I think that you have to do that.
What’s the grand plan, if everything goes right?
Look, fitness, CrossFit, functional training is the most transformational thing in my life. I’ve been doing it for over a decade now, but I can track a direct correlation in the trajectory of my life with discovering the transformational power of training and competition.
I had a life before it and I had a life after it, and the life after it was way, way, way better.
If I can play a part in introducing one other person to the transformative power that this space and this culture had on me, knowing how distinctly it changed my life, I think there’s a genuine good in what we’re doing.
How about the Olympics? Is that on the agenda?
It’s a route to go down. It’s a route to go down in terms of traditional mainstream sporting recognition.
We probably would tick a lot of the boxes as I understand the Olympic qualification process follows. It’s got to be standardised. It’s got to be new. It’s got to be something that attracts a new audience of people. It’s got to be federalised. There’s a very complicated process to go down with it.
It’s something most sports in our world probably aspire to in the long term. I wouldn’t say I’m committing myself to an Olympic journey at this point, but certainly wouldn’t rule it out as something that we look at in the future.
If the Enhanced Games reached out to you and said they’d like you to become part of what they’re doing, would you accept that offer?
I don’t think so. I think entrepreneurship, innovation is cool and I think trying to do new things is cool.
I worry about the implications that something so explicit as the Enhanced Games presents from a cultural perspective.
I understand what they are doing and I understand why. From a making-noise perspective it’s obviously making a lot of noise, but I would say that I am relatively traditional in terms of my sporting beliefs and would say that the even playing field is the route that we would like to continue to go down.
I will be really interested to see if they break any world records, because there is no guarantee that taking these substances and doing that stuff is going to make them break anything.
As an outsider, the natural way I think about this is as a category that includes Xenom, Hyrox and AthX. Would I be wrong?
No, I think you should. It’s the sport of fitness. I don’t think the sport is just fitness racing. I think that we are an expression of the sport of fitness. I think Hyrox is an expression of that. I think the CrossFit Games are an expression of that.
There is no reason why fitness is not the biggest sport in the world.
It is already the biggest mass participatory activity in the world in terms of the number of people with gym memberships. It dwarfs any other sport by an order of magnitude.
If you are in a category, you are competing against each other. Who ultimately wins?
I genuinely think that you’ll have your own lanes and I think success looks different for all of those. I do think it’s a little bit reductive to say that you’re competing against each other.
Hyrox just sold out eight days in New York, 40,000 spaces overnight. If you’re looking at the space and saying there isn’t enough demand for everyone in it, then you’re a bit blind to what the demand is.
I wanted to talk about the relationship with CrossFit. What’s that been like to establish?
Yeah, super positive. We knew that we wanted to launch. We went and spoke to them about the idea. We said, “Hey, we think that this works best in a system where we’re licensed by you, where we can talk really openly about being for CrossFitters.”
I can’t speak highly enough. I spoke with Dave Castro, Don Faul, Dallabor Snyder across the course of a couple of weeks in putting the deal together.
We got it done super quickly, we got it done really efficiently, and they’ve been great partners.
Is it a permanent relationship?
We have a 12-month initial deal, but obviously the intention is that it’s a long-term thing. I think that’s the best solution for everyone.
As an individual, what does this give you the opportunity to do that matters to you?
We’ve had the experience of building one business into a really successful business, and I think this is a business with an even greater ceiling on it.
To bring something that was genuinely life-changing for me to as many other people as possible, and to create experiences for people that are life-changing.
There is a large percentage of the population who see people who train all the time and for whom fitness is a large part of their life, and they really can’t understand it.
I think that we are going to do this thing where we say, “Jon, take this thing that you do that lots of people in your life don’t understand and go and do it in the Dallas Cowboys stadium, and get your wife and your kids and your best friend to come and watch you and bring it out into the light.”
We basically said we’ve done the base camp climb to Everest, which is in itself a really difficult, hard thing to do. But the work starts now, and we’re just getting started.
For more on Xenom, click here. To purchase tickets, click here.
