After being sidelined from running for a bit, I’ve been on the lookout for alternative ways to fuel my competitive fire. Enter The Fitness Games, a new app that aims to make exercise as addicting as Candy Crush Saga.

Some background: I met founders Arya Farzin and Joseph Phillips, two nationally-certified trainers with a combined 20 years of experience in the fitness industry, at this year’s IDEA World fitness conference. Not only are they super-nice, extremely-passionate guys, but there’s a great story behind the creation of the app: Obese for most of his life, Arya decided to make a change when he was 19 years old. After losing 200 pounds, he made it his mission to help people all over the world make the same positive changes…and have fun while doing it.

So here’s how it works: Instead of having to go it alone each day until my marathon training resumes, I can challenge anyone, anywhere, to any type of workout, post photos and videos to show progress, or simply challenge myself with one of the app’s workouts. What I love most, though, is that I can find a partner  — regardless of geography or time zone — to connect with via GPS so we can compete and track our progress in real time.

Whether it’s a virtual elliptical buddy (yep, I need some help staying on the machine for 45 minutes) or motivational match-up for some strength training, all I do is post the the workout I want to complete via the app dashboard. Other users respond if they are interested in doing the same workout, and then it’s go-time!

Workouts are divided into four categories: Cardio, Strength, Full-Body and Cross Training. Each category operates on a unique scoring system that was carefully designed to determine how hard users exercised to determine the winner of each head-to-head contest.

Points earned during challenges can be used to level up, as well as unlock free workouts. And all workouts performed are tracked, scored and saved so users can see their progress over time.

If you’re looking for a way to get motivated and make workouts a team effort, this is a simple, yet effective, tool for tricking yourself into being more consistent. And, let’s face it, there’s nothing like a little friendly competition to get us all stoked for that next sweat session, right?

Let the games begin!

This post was sponsored by The Fitness Games through their partnership with Fit Approach. I was not compensated monetarily, but was provided the Platinum Version of the application for review. As always, all opinions are my own.