Penrith gyms team up to raise funds for fireys

Here’s your chance to work up a sweat to help out with bushfire relief.

(Back) Functional Training Playground's Luke Saliba, Anytime Fitness' Jake Lockwood, Plus Fitness' Daniel Burford, G3 Fitness' Matt Gamble and F45's Pomare Withell. (Front) Knockout Nutrition's Racso Harada, World Gym's Clair Williams and Glute Guru's Aden Gazi.

Firefighters have worked themselves to exhaustion saving homes and lives in recent weeks, and now you have a chance to return the favour.

A group of fitness companies in Penrith City are banding together to run a charity bootcamp at Jamison Oval in South Penrith on Sunday morning.

Plus Fitness, G3 Performance Centre, World Gym, F45, Zoo Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Knockout Nutrition, Nutrition Warehouse, the Glute Guru and Just Sport Glenmore Park will come together to raise money for bushfire relief.

G3’s Matt Gamble said the idea for the event came from Australian company Thankyou.

“What they do is take out money from production and use it to give to charities,” he said.

“They’ve created a book called Pay What You Want which is about how they started, and that gave me the idea.

“The main drive is to raise as much money as possible for these charities.”

Mr Gamble said he wasn’t personally affected by the fires, but a number of his gym members were.

“A lot of our members up in the mountains had a bit of drama last week,” he said.

“Everyone’s mentality was different on that day, and it led us to thinking ‘what can we do to help?’.”

Plus Fitness’ Daniel Burford said the bootcamp would begin at 8am at the Jamison Park netball courts, and participants were invited to pay any amount they felt like.

“This bootcamp is purely designed to bring together the community through fitness and fun and raise money for these devastating fires that have happened over the past couple of weeks,” he said.

“Our main goal is to bring together all the fitness studios and gyms in the Penrith region with members of the community representing their gym and do one big bootcamp to raise money for those who need it most.”

Mr Gamble said he hoped for at least 250 people on the day.

“It’s been crazy, my phone hasn’t stopped all week,” he said.

“We’ve got 13 gyms on board at this stage, and I had another four contact me just over the weekend.

“I had the coach of an under 15s girls soccer team tell me they’d bring their team down, and our online video has had close to 4000 views.”

Mr Burford said there would prizes on the day, as well as free coffees, supplement testing and a barbecue.