Want to spice up your home workout routine? The “CouchFit” games might be the online event you’ve been looking for.

 

Organized by East West Fitness, the Bangkok-based supplier of weight-training equipment to gyms across Thailand, this online-only competition pits athletes against one another over several weeks.

 

The competition begins with four qualifying workouts, spread across two weeks, that are open to anyone—from CrossFit beginners to WOD-nailing pros. The workout for this first stage will be announced Apr 13. Participants must complete it within the given time limit, record video of themselves doing it and post their scores and videos on a third-party leaderboard to qualify for the next round.

 

From there, the East West judges will whittle the list down to the top eight men and top eight women, who will face off head to head—digitally speaking—in elimination brackets, starting with the quarterfinals on May 2. The semifinals will take place on May 6 before the event culminates in the finals on May 9.

 

Before each round, workouts will be sent to the competing pairs of athletes. Each must then submit a video of them completing the workout in the allotted time. East West will upload the videos, place them side-by-side with commentary from the judges and premiere them as part of a semi-live event on the East West Facebook page. Athletes won’t know the results until the videos are posted.

 

The winners of the men’s and women’s brackets will walk away with the option of: a colorway weightlifting set, featuring a new spring steel barbell with nano color-coating; a home set package, including kettleballs, dumbbells, a medicine ball, a box and an abmat; or a red-and-black colorway multipurpose weight rack.

 

There is a fee of B1,000 to join the competition. Half of that will be donated to the gym of your choice.

 

“While we understand and support the decision to close gyms, the shutdown has been rough,” explains Sasarat “Sundae” Thamniyai, marketing manager for East West and its flagship venue Training Ground, the city’s largest CrossFit gym, located in Phra Khanong. “I’m not going to lie—it has derailed us, and I think a lot of businesses are in the same position. That’s why we created the competition. While we can’t control the situation, we can support each other.”

 

Apart from this effort to support local gyms and athletes, Training Ground has also brought its services online—group classes, nutrition and meal planning, personal training sessions and more.

 

“Gyms are a service-based community,” says Sundae. “While we can’t help out our members physically, we’re going to find other ways to bring [them] some form of relief. We’ve switched up our model so that our they don’t have to worry about coming to us; we can go to them directly.”

 

Need to get in some prep work ahead of the competition? Training Ground is letting members bring its gym equipment home and offering equipment rental to the public, too.

 

For more information or to sign up for the competition, visit this page.