SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Making plans to hit the gym in the new year? So are more young people across Asia, where health and wellness is a booming business. And one new competition has become especially trendy in recent months. Stephanie Yang reports from Bangkok.
UNIDENTIFIED EMCEE: Three, two, one.
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STEPHANIE YANG, BYLINE: The event is known as HYROX, short for hybrid rockstar. This timed fitness competition is made up of eight workout stations, broken up by 1-kilometer laps. Music blares in the background, and emcees cheer racers as they cross the finish line.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
YANG: The global racing challenge, which started in Germany in 2017, is kind of like CrossFit but less intense. Now its events are selling out in Asia. In Bangkok, which hosted its first HYROX race last year, the bigger challenge has become snagging a ticket, which costs about 100 to $150.
RICHARD COWLEY: When we opened Bangkok, we were a little bit caught off guard. We did a one-day race to start with. We sold that out immediately, basically - like, 4,500 people in the first 18 hours.
YANG: This is Richard Cowley, director for HYROX events in Asia, where participation has doubled in the past year. Training sessions have been popping up all over Bangkok before the next race in March.
UNIDENTIFIED INSTRUCTOR: Going up and then down. Hold...
YANG: Gym owners in Bangkok say fitness used to be a niche market, mostly for foreigners and bodybuilders. But these days, young Asians are much more conscious of their health. That's spurring demand for physical activities from Pilates to pickleball, making the industry a multibillion-dollar business opportunity across Asia. Jack Thomas, who's been running a gym in Thailand for about 10 years, says programs like HYROX are the latest iteration of the wellness trend in the region.
JACK THOMAS: Well, it's probably 18 months ago that we joined as a HYROX gym. We've just seen sort of explosive growth, really. So now, both of our locations are HYROX training clubs. Our HYROX classes are some of the busiest that we have.
YANG: Thomas runs two out of 25 gyms in Bangkok offering HYROX classes. At one of them, 32-year-old Prow Vidhaya and her boyfriend are training for a proper race in Seoul, since the last race in Bangkok sold out. She says she likes HYROX because it's challenging but accessible.
PROW VIDHAYA: But I think for Thai people in general, it's a whole hype. And HYROX is so, like, easy to enter 'cause you can do as a couple, you can do as a team of four, so the bar to enter the race is very low.
YANG: I tried out some classes myself in October. They play high-energy music and repeat movements from the competition, like burpees or rowing, in short, intense bursts.
This is my third HYROX class here in Bangkok, and they're all about the same going through the stations. Today, we're doing four and switching through them. There's about 15 people here. It's 30 minutes in, and I'm already pretty tired.
Another trainee here is Tawan Taradolrattanakorn, a 28-year-old pet groomer and YouTube host. He started taking HYROX classes to try something new and because his fitness idols were doing it, too.
TAWAN TARADOLRATTANAKORN: Many Thai influencers go for the gym, maybe Pilates, HYROX, HIIT, go running, and everybody following them.
YANG: Gym owner Thomas says HYROX has helped open the door for amateur athletes to try out new rival competitions as well. That's putting him on the lookout for what trend may come next.
THOMAS: People eventually will be looking for new experiences, new things to do.
YANG: What's key, he says, is to keep them from getting bored. For NPR News, I'm Stephanie Yang, reporting from Bangkok. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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