Looking back over the past year, few sports have exploded into a global phenomenon as rapidly as HYROX.

It’s not traditional running, nor is it purely a strength competition, yet it has attracted hundreds of thousands of people to step onto the fitness arena for the first time. It can be said that the emergence of HYROX has not only changed the way people participate in fitness training but also reshaped the relationships between sports brands, gyms, and ordinary fitness enthusiasts.

Now that Hybrid Training, represented by HYROX, has become a global trend, more people are wondering: will this participation-driven competition phenomenon happen again?

In November this year, Adidas announced a partnership with ATHX Games and will support its subsequent expansion. This comprehensive fitness competition born in the UK has thus come into the spotlight of more people.

In terms of competition format, it does not emphasize extreme standardization like HYROX, nor does it yet have nationwide popularity. However, in the European fitness circle, which excels in functional training and competitive fitness, it is known as "one of the most challenging fitness competitions."

Over the past year, ATHX Games has made frequent moves, simultaneously advancing competition expansion, training system construction, and gym network layout in a short period of time, thus being regarded as the "international version of HYROX."

So, is ATHX Games a more hardcore niche competition, or the prototype of the next generation of fitness competitive IP? The answer may lie in the process of national fitness increasingly moving towards competition.

"International Version of HYROX": A New Fitness Arena

If HYROX made it a reality for "ordinary people to stand on the competitive stage," then ATHX Games is attempting to move the complete training process directly into the competition itself.

Unlike common functional fitness competitions, it does not pursue short-term bursts but a full fitness test lasting about 2.5 hours, which can be systematically broken down into four stages: strength, endurance, metabolic training, and recovery.

The competition does not start with the sound of a gun—

Athletes first enter a 30-minute warm-up area equipped with weight plates, dumbbells, etc., where they independently raise their heart rate, activate key joints, and make psychological preparations.

The first competitive content is a pure strength challenge. Within about 20 minutes, athletes will be tested for maximum repetitions or maximum weight, including compound strength exercises such as back squats and overhead presses. Elite groups will also include maximum repetition weighted pull-ups and other content.

After the strength challenge, the competition does not proceed to the next round of exertion but sets up a 10-minute supply area—a link often overlooked in fitness competitions but crucial in ATHX’s competition format. Here, athletes can choose to hydrate, eat, change shoes, adjust equipment, and even discuss tactical arrangements for the next stage.

After a short adjustment, athletes will enter a 30-minute endurance zone, completing continuous output through cycling and running. The venue’s large screen displays the overall ranking in real-time, with competitive pressure and physical exertion piling up simultaneously. After the endurance zone, athletes will also get a 30-minute recovery period.

The final "grand finale" is the Metcon X ultimate challenge: athletes need to complete a combination of high-metabolic exercises such as rowing, dumbbell thrusters, box jumps, burpees, and sandbag over-the-shoulder in 30 minutes, pushing the competition intensity to the limit for a thrilling conclusion.

It is not difficult to see that unlike HYROX’s standardized "running + functional stations" modules, ATHX has a lower proportion of running, focusing more on comprehensive abilities of strength, cardiopulmonary function, and muscular endurance, and formally incorporating recovery ability into the evaluation system.

As the organizers said, "In every competition, we reward good movement form and reasonable rhythm control." Coupled with the competition format that changes to a certain extent every year, ATHX is closer to a real training process.

Behind such a seemingly sophisticated competition system is actually an emerging event company. According to GymSquare’s research, ATHX Games Limited was officially established in the UK on October 1, 2024, while the activities of the fitness competition brand itself first started in 2023.

However, as a young IP in the fitness competition industry, ATHX’s expansion speed has already shown signs. Over the past year, nearly 6,000 athletes participated in ATHX competitions held in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham, Dublin, and Liverpool. This number is close to HYROX’s scale four years ago—7,400 people participated in HYROX in the UK in the 2021/2022 season, but by the 2024/2025 season, this number has exceeded 650,000.

Currently, HYROX is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, and ATHX, as a latecomer, has naturally been given high expectations. Therefore, when the news of the Adidas partnership spread, more people are concerned: when will ATHX Games come to China?

Judging from the newly announced schedule, ATHX’s pace has obviously accelerated. The 2026 season tour will cover 10 countries with 14 events, starting in London at the end of January and concluding in Amsterdam in early November. The UK remains the largest host country, with two stops each in Germany, France, and Spain, and the remaining events distributed in Italy, Ireland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

At the same time, ATHX has confirmed strategic plans to enter the United States, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.

It is worth noting that Adidas previously launched a special project "House of Strength," inviting fitness influencers from around the world to Lisbon for a 6-day training camp to fully experience the complete set of ATHX 2026 training content, including one influencer from mainland China. This move also reveals signals of ATHX’s future entry into the Chinese market to a certain extent.

More Than a Fitness Competition: A "Lifestyle Business"

From various trends, ATHX’s ambition is not limited to hosting a "more difficult competition," but to create an immersive competition atmosphere and break through through global social media, making the competition a national fitness experience that ordinary people can watch, share, and participate in.

HYROX has already verified this—competition items built around seven basic human movement patterns have formed a unique event of "treating one kilometer as a comma," and this topic even once topped the hot search list on domestic social platforms.

Similar trends have also appeared in other competitions. The Spartan Race, founded in 2010 as one of the pioneers of Obstacle Course Racing (OCR), launched the functional fitness competition DEKA in 2019, which has been extremely popular with an average annual growth rate of 65% since its launch. DEKA Ultra, which made its domestic debut this year, pushed the challenge intensity and attention to new heights by completing DEKA Fit five times in a row.

As netizens sighed, "Fitness is no longer just going to the gym a few times a week, but a combination of the desire to challenge oneself and a sense of community belonging."

This is the reason why fitness competitions are shifting from "competition" to "lifestyle," and this transformation is also pushing competitions to become more visible and social—HYROX even recently announced the launch of a four-day cruise fitness trip departing next October, with the lowest ticket price of 1,300 euros (about 10,000 RMB), moving the training camp directly to the sea.

From this model, ATHX also has the potential to become a "global fitness competition."

Taking the 2026 London stop as an example, the individual participation fee is 93.5 pounds (about 882 RMB), and the two-person participation fee is 187 pounds (about 1,763 RMB). The relatively high pricing leaves ample room for commercial imagination; in addition, the independently set supply area provides more space for brand placement, partner exposure, and in-depth experiences.

And this cooperation with Adidas has basically put ATHX on the "shortlist of global competitions" in advance—

Before this year’s finals, ATHX held its first official training camp in Tenerife, Spain; in December, one of the co-founders and former professional rugby player Ollie Marchon launched a 12-week ATHX systematic training plan, designed and guided by CrossFit Games veteran and 2025 ATHX Games champion Chandler Smith.

Shortly after, ATHX officially announced a partnership with German gym CrossFit Tübingen to establish the first official Regional Hub, and will hold an ATHX Games simulation competition at the venue in early 2026.

Previously, ATHX has collaborated with 12 fitness institutions in the UK, and this step marks the official launch of its European expansion. This expansion path is highly similar to HYROX’s early layout in Germany and Northern Europe.

From competitions and training camps to gym networks, it is not difficult to see that ATHX is building a more long-term brand growth system. Every step taken now determines whether it can grow from an emerging competition to a fitness competitive IP with a true global foundation.

National Fitness: Comprehensive Competition

Just as HYROX’s explosive popularity once surprised its founding team, a fitness competition becoming a phenomenon often requires various factors of timing, location, and people.

For ATHX, despite the participation of a sports giant, there are still a lot of uncertainties in the future.

The most prominent limiting factor is that ATHX’s competition format prevents it from being as highly popular as HYROX. However, according to GymSquare’s recent observations and interview feedback with core comprehensive training groups, ATHX’s appeal is accumulating rapidly; some domestic sports brands have tried to introduce small-scale ATHX Games experience competitions for member activities, reflecting the market’s tentative interest.

October this year marked an important milestone for ATHX—it held its first official competition outside the UK in Berlin, Germany, with 2024 CrossFit Games champion James Sprague and many HYROX elite athletes competing together.

But practical problems also exist: currently, the ATHX overall champion has no cash prize, only equipment, competition places, and honorary recognition, lacking long-term binding with elite athletes. In contrast, the 2025 HYROX World Championships awarded a total of more than 300,000 US dollars in prizes across three groups, an increase of 20% over the previous year, showing great sincerity.

This is perhaps one of the most anticipated changes after Adidas’s entry. Just as PUMA is strengthening HYROX’s competitive height through systematic signing of elite athletes, whether Adidas can successfully introduce its own athlete resources into ATHX in the future will also play a key role in enhancing the competition’s competitiveness and further leveraging its commercial value.

In the short term, HYROX will remain the absolute leader in the fitness competition field. Its partnership with PUMA extends to 2030, and it is expected to host more than 100 events by 2026, attracting 1.3 million participants.

Against this backdrop of rapid growth, ATHX may not become the second HYROX. However, with the continuous popularity of Hybrid Training and the evolution of national fitness towards competition, it may be standing at a new node where "everything is possible."

Looking back over the past year, few sports have exploded into a global phenomenon as rapidly as HYROX.

It’s not traditional running, nor is it purely a strength competition, yet it has attracted hundreds of thousands of people to step onto the fitness arena for the first time. It can be said that the emergence of HYROX has not only changed the way people participate in fitness training but also reshaped the relationships between sports brands, gyms, and ordinary fitness enthusiasts.

Now that Hybrid Training, represented by HYROX, has become a global trend, more people are wondering: will this participation-driven competition phenomenon happen again?

In November this year, Adidas announced a partnership with ATHX Games and will support its subsequent expansion. This comprehensive fitness competition born in the UK has thus come into the spotlight of more people.

In terms of competition format, it does not emphasize extreme standardization like HYROX, nor does it yet have nationwide popularity. However, in the European fitness circle, which excels in functional training and competitive fitness, it is known as "one of the most challenging fitness competitions."

Over the past year, ATHX Games has made frequent moves, simultaneously advancing competition expansion, training system construction, and gym network layout in a short period of time, thus being regarded as the "international version of HYROX."

So, is ATHX Games a more hardcore niche competition, or the prototype of the next generation of fitness competitive IP? The answer may lie in the process of national fitness increasingly moving towards competition.

"International Version of HYROX": A New Fitness Arena

If HYROX made it a reality for "ordinary people to stand on the competitive stage," then ATHX Games is attempting to move the complete training process directly into the competition itself.

Unlike common functional fitness competitions, it does not pursue short-term bursts but a full fitness test lasting about 2.5 hours, which can be systematically broken down into four stages: strength, endurance, metabolic training, and recovery.

The competition does not start with the sound of a gun—

Athletes first enter a 30-minute warm-up area equipped with weight plates, dumbbells, etc., where they independently raise their heart rate, activate key joints, and make psychological preparations.

The first competitive content is a pure strength challenge. Within about 20 minutes, athletes will be tested for maximum repetitions or maximum weight, including compound strength exercises such as back squats and overhead presses. Elite groups will also include maximum repetition weighted pull-ups and other content.

After the strength challenge, the competition does not proceed to the next round of exertion but sets up a 10-minute supply area—a link often overlooked in fitness competitions but crucial in ATHX’s competition format. Here, athletes can choose to hydrate, eat, change shoes, adjust equipment, and even discuss tactical arrangements for the next stage.

After a short adjustment, athletes will enter a 30-minute endurance zone, completing continuous output through cycling and running. The venue’s large screen displays the overall ranking in real-time, with competitive pressure and physical exertion piling up simultaneously. After the endurance zone, athletes will also get a 30-minute recovery period.

The final "grand finale" is the Metcon X ultimate challenge: athletes need to complete a combination of high-metabolic exercises such as rowing, dumbbell thrusters, box jumps, burpees, and sandbag over-the-shoulder in 30 minutes, pushing the competition intensity to the limit for a thrilling conclusion.

It is not difficult to see that unlike HYROX’s standardized "running + functional stations" modules, ATHX has a lower proportion of running, focusing more on comprehensive abilities of strength, cardiopulmonary function, and muscular endurance, and formally incorporating recovery ability into the evaluation system.

As the organizers said, "In every competition, we reward good movement form and reasonable rhythm control." Coupled with the competition format that changes to a certain extent every year, ATHX is closer to a real training process.

Behind such a seemingly sophisticated competition system is actually an emerging event company. According to GymSquare’s research, ATHX Games Limited was officially established in the UK on October 1, 2024, while the activities of the fitness competition brand itself first started in 2023.

However, as a young IP in the fitness competition industry, ATHX’s expansion speed has already shown signs. Over the past year, nearly 6,000 athletes participated in ATHX competitions held in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham, Dublin, and Liverpool. This number is close to HYROX’s scale four years ago—7,400 people participated in HYROX in the UK in the 2021/2022 season, but by the 2024/2025 season, this number has exceeded 650,000.

Currently, HYROX is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, and ATHX, as a latecomer, has naturally been given high expectations. Therefore, when the news of the Adidas partnership spread, more people are concerned: when will ATHX Games come to China?

Judging from the newly announced schedule, ATHX’s pace has obviously accelerated. The 2026 season tour will cover 10 countries with 14 events, starting in London at the end of January and concluding in Amsterdam in early November. The UK remains the largest host country, with two stops each in Germany, France, and Spain, and the remaining events distributed in Italy, Ireland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

At the same time, ATHX has confirmed strategic plans to enter the United States, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.

It is worth noting that Adidas previously launched a special project "House of Strength," inviting fitness influencers from around the world to Lisbon for a 6-day training camp to fully experience the complete set of ATHX 2026 training content, including one influencer from mainland China. This move also reveals signals of ATHX’s future entry into the Chinese market to a certain extent.

More Than a Fitness Competition: A "Lifestyle Business"

From various trends, ATHX’s ambition is not limited to hosting a "more difficult competition," but to create an immersive competition atmosphere and break through through global social media, making the competition a national fitness experience that ordinary people can watch, share, and participate in.

HYROX has already verified this—competition items built around seven basic human movement patterns have formed a unique event of "treating one kilometer as a comma," and this topic even once topped the hot search list on domestic social platforms.

Similar trends have also appeared in other competitions. The Spartan Race, founded in 2010 as one of the pioneers of Obstacle Course Racing (OCR), launched the functional fitness competition DEKA in 2019, which has been extremely popular with an average annual growth rate of 65% since its launch. DEKA Ultra, which made its domestic debut this year, pushed the challenge intensity and attention to new heights by completing DEKA Fit five times in a row.

As netizens sighed, "Fitness is no longer just going to the gym a few times a week, but a combination of the desire to challenge oneself and a sense of community belonging."

This is the reason why fitness competitions are shifting from "competition" to "lifestyle," and this transformation is also pushing competitions to become more visible and social—HYROX even recently announced the launch of a four-day cruise fitness trip departing next October, with the lowest ticket price of 1,300 euros (about 10,000 RMB), moving the training camp directly to the sea.

From this model, ATHX also has the potential to become a "global fitness competition."

Taking the 2026 London stop as an example, the individual participation fee is 93.5 pounds (about 882 RMB), and the two-person participation fee is 187 pounds (about 1,763 RMB). The relatively high pricing leaves ample room for commercial imagination; in addition, the independently set supply area provides more space for brand placement, partner exposure, and in-depth experiences.

And this cooperation with Adidas has basically put ATHX on the "shortlist of global competitions" in advance—

Before this year’s finals, ATHX held its first official training camp in Tenerife, Spain; in December, one of the co-founders and former professional rugby player Ollie Marchon launched a 12-week ATHX systematic training plan, designed and guided by CrossFit Games veteran and 2025 ATHX Games champion Chandler Smith.

Shortly after, ATHX officially announced a partnership with German gym CrossFit Tübingen to establish the first official Regional Hub, and will hold an ATHX Games simulation competition at the venue in early 2026.

Previously, ATHX has collaborated with 12 fitness institutions in the UK, and this step marks the official launch of its European expansion. This expansion path is highly similar to HYROX’s early layout in Germany and Northern Europe.

From competitions and training camps to gym networks, it is not difficult to see that ATHX is building a more long-term brand growth system. Every step taken now determines whether it can grow from an emerging competition to a fitness competitive IP with a true global foundation.

National Fitness: Comprehensive Competition

Just as HYROX’s explosive popularity once surprised its founding team, a fitness competition becoming a phenomenon often requires various factors of timing, location, and people.

For ATHX, despite the participation of a sports giant, there are still a lot of uncertainties in the future.

The most prominent limiting factor is that ATHX’s competition format prevents it from being as highly popular as HYROX. However, according to GymSquare’s recent observations and interview feedback with core comprehensive training groups, ATHX’s appeal is accumulating rapidly; some domestic sports brands have tried to introduce small-scale ATHX Games experience competitions for member activities, reflecting the market’s tentative interest.

October this year marked an important milestone for ATHX—it held its first official competition outside the UK in Berlin, Germany, with 2024 CrossFit Games champion James Sprague and many HYROX elite athletes competing together.

But practical problems also exist: currently, the ATHX overall champion has no cash prize, only equipment, competition places, and honorary recognition, lacking long-term binding with elite athletes. In contrast, the 2025 HYROX World Championships awarded a total of more than 300,000 US dollars in prizes across three groups, an increase of 20% over the previous year, showing great sincerity.

This is perhaps one of the most anticipated changes after Adidas’s entry. Just as PUMA is strengthening HYROX’s competitive height through systematic signing of elite athletes, whether Adidas can successfully introduce its own athlete resources into ATHX in the future will also play a key role in enhancing the competition’s competitiveness and further leveraging its commercial value.

In the short term, HYROX will remain the absolute leader in the fitness competition field. Its partnership with PUMA extends to 2030, and it is expected to host more than 100 events by 2026, attracting 1.3 million participants.

Against this backdrop of rapid growth, ATHX may not become the second HYROX. However, with the continuous popularity of Hybrid Training and the evolution of national fitness towards competition, it may be standing at a new node where "everything is possible."