Competitive Play

🏛️ Overview

The Spartacus Arena is Gainz Gym’s seasonal competitive system and the primary path to ROI. Players enter weight-class leaderboards based on their gym count and compete for real SOL prizes and in-game rewards over 90-day seasons — paid out across three 30-day windows, not one season-end lump. The harder you grind, the more $GAINZ you claim, and the higher you climb.

Entry requirement: 👀 The leaderboard is viewable by anyone at any gym level — scope out your competition before committing. Entering is for full members: registration requires at least one gym at Level 3 or higher and a paid account. Free-to-Play players can watch every board, but competing for the SOL pool means converting first.

🥊 Weight Classes & Seat Caps

Players are sorted into weight classes by gym count. In Season 2 the top two classes are seat-capped — sized to the field, so every chair that exists gets paid, and a full class becomes something you fight your way into:

Class	Gyms	Entry Fee	Seats
🐣 Rookie (first season only)	1-2	75 RR	uncapped
🪶 Featherweight	1-2	75 RR	uncapped
🥊 Lightweight	3-4	125 RR	uncapped
🏋️ Middleweight	5-8	250 RR	uncapped
💪 Heavyweight	9-13	500 RR	9
👑 Champion	14-18	1,000 RR	7

🐣 Rookie is a protected parallel pool for first-season players at 1-2 gyms — same band and fee as Featherweight, but you only ever face other newcomers. Buy a 3rd gym and you graduate into the open classes. Returning players never see Rookie.

🏋️ Middleweight is deliberately uncapped — it’s the landing zone. If you race for a capped seat and miss, or grow into a full class’s band mid-season, trading down into the 5-8 gym range always has room. Nobody sits out a season for lack of a chair.

⏱️ Making Weight — the opening clock

Every season starts with a 7-day Making Weight period. The first four days run on a clock:

Hours 0-48 — Reserved. If you finished last season locked in Heavyweight or Champion, a seat in that class is held for you. Claim it by locking in — unclaimed reservations are forfeited at hour 48. Every other class is open to everyone from minute one.
Hour 48 — Doors open. Unclaimed capped seats go first-come to anyone who makes weight for the band. Expect this to move fast: leftover seats in a capped class can be gone within minutes.
Hour 96 — Trade-in closes. The one-time gym trade-in (5,000 RR back per gym, once per season, only before you lock, you always keep at least 1 gym) shuts. After this the field is set.

The Arena shows a live seat board (CHAMPION 5/7 · HEAVY 8/9) the whole time, so every decision is made against real numbers. One warning worth reading twice: if the only class your gym count fits is full, you have no seat until you change your gym count. Champion (14+) and Heavyweight (9-13) are both capped, and a full class can’t be entered late, re-locked into, or joined without a challenge. If yours fills without you, trade down before hour 96 — 13 gyms locks Heavyweight, 8 lands in Middleweight — or you’ll have no class to enter this season. Middleweight is uncapped and always has room.

📅 Season Structure

Season Length: 90 days, split into three 30-day windows
Checkpoints: At day 30 and day 60 a slice of the prize pool pays out on that window’s standings, and the window race resets to zero. The finale (day 90) sweeps the remaining pool — the biggest payday of the season
Weekly Cycles: In-game prize tournaments run weekly throughout (see Weekly Prizes)
⏳ Late Entry: Days 8-30 cost 1.5x the base fee, days 31-60 cost 2x; no new entries in the final 30 days. Late entrants only score $GAINZ claimed from the moment they register — and can only enter a capped class if it has an open seat

🏋️ Moving Up in Weight Class

Re-locking into a higher class is a window event: it opens for the first 72 hours of each 30-day window, costs the new class’s full entry fee, and requires an open seat. Your accumulated season $GAINZ carries over. There’s still no moving down mid-season — outside of the one-time Making Weight trade-in, gyms can’t be discarded.

⚔️ Challenges — full class? Take a seat

When a capped class is full, the only way in is through someone. The last 7 days of windows 1 and 2 are the challenge window: a player in the class directly below can raise a challenge, and it must be raised in the first 48 hours of those 7 days — no sniping the deadline once the numbers are all but final:

The fee is the target class’s full entry fee — the same price a re-lock would cost.
The contest: your window earnings vs the weakest seat-holder’s, both measured on the target class’s gym allowance. Ties go to the defender.
Win: you take their seat for the next window; they drop one class. Lose: half the fee comes back. If the challenge can’t be judged (the class opened up, for example), it’s fully refunded.

The Arena shows the challenge board live — who’s challenging, which seats are at risk, and the earnings bar a challenger has to beat.

🎯 How Scoring Works

Your rank is based on $GAINZ claimed during the current window — not raw power — counted on the gyms that qualify for your class (your first N gyms, where N is your class’s band ceiling). Everyone in a class is measured on the same gym scope, so over-buying past your band doesn’t buy leaderboard position. Claiming regularly and maximizing every epoch is what climbs the board.

💰 Season Prize Pool (SOL)

A significant portion of every SOL spent in the game flows into the prize wallet continuously. The pool shown in-game is the live on-chain balance of the season prize wallet — what you see in the Arena equals what you can verify on Solscan. Each checkpoint pays its slice; the finale sweeps whatever remains, including anything unclaimed from earlier seasons.

🏆 Prize Distribution per Weight Class

Each class splits its slice of the pool across its seats. Payouts flatten less at the top than Season 1 — every climb up the board is worth at least as much as the one below it, a higher class out-earns the class below at every placement, and the top 3 of each class beat the winner of the class directly below.

Shares below are percent of that class’s pool. Champion and Heavyweight figures are what a full class pays — if seats sit empty, their weight folds across the seated players instead of going unpaid:

Place	🐣🪶 Rookie / Feather	🥊 Light	🏋️ Middle	💪 Heavy (9 seats)	👑 Champion (7 seats)
🥇 1st	20%	22.5%	22%	21.5%	24.9%
🥈 2nd	15%	16.75%	18.5%	18.1%	19.7%
🥉 3rd	11%	12.75%	15.25%	14.5%	16.2%
4th	8.5%	9.5%	11.25%	12.2%	12.7%
5th	6.75%	6.75%	8.25%	9.8%	10.4%
6th	5.25%	5.25%	6%	8%	8.7%
7th	4.25%	4%	4.5%	6.5%	7.5%
8th	3.5%	3.25%	3.5%	5.2%	—
9th	2.75%	2.5%	3.25%	4.1%	—
10th	2.25%	1.75%	2.5%	—	—
11th+	20.75%	15%	5%	—	—

The 11th+ row is a participation pool split evenly among everyone outside the top 10, with each player’s share capped just below the 10th-place payout — finishing 11th can never out-earn finishing 10th, and in a thin class the cap keeps the ladder honest. The participation budget shrinks as classes rise (Rookie/Feather 20.75% → Light 15% → Middle 5%) because that’s where the crowds are; Heavyweight and Champion are seats-only — every percent of those pools goes to a seated player.

Empty seats: In the capped classes, unfilled seats don’t waste money — their share folds across the players who did show up (bounded, so a nearly-empty class can’t out-pay a full one). In the participation classes, any budget the cap leaves unpaid stays in the prize wallet and rolls into future payouts.

🎁 Weekly Prizes (In-Game)

In addition to the season SOL pool, top performers each week earn in-game prizes — RR, athlete packs, supplement packs, guaranteed-rarity items, and sometimes chest bags. Rewards scale by weight class, with 👑 Champion-class players earning the most. In Heavyweight and Champion, every athlete and supplement pack in the weekly ladder is guaranteed Epic or better — no filler pulls at the top of the game. Some weeks run special formats (like % Improvement, where growth against your own baseline is what counts — a format built for underdogs).

🧠 Strategy Tips for Competition

⚖️ Pick your class during Making Weight — the trade-in window is your one chance per season to drop weight. Watch the seat board before deciding whether to race for a capped seat or take a guaranteed one below
⏱️ Enter early — late entry fees scale up, you miss weekly prizes, and capped seats may be gone
💪 Claim consistently — scoring is window $GAINZ claimed, so regular play beats passive holding, and every window is a fresh race
📈 Maximize power on your first N gyms — only the gyms that qualify for your class count toward your score
🧢 Coach timing — equip your best coach at the start of a window, not mid-race
⚔️ Watch the challenge board — a weak seat above you in the last week of a window is an invitation