Explore new sports

If you are not sure what sport you could take up, or use to get healthy with a new platform allows you to mix and match. ALIX NORMAN finds out more

So you’ve signed up for a yoga class, or Zumba, or cross fit. You’ve paid your hard-earned cash, joined a session, sweated out the toxins. And then you realise you’re not actually enjoying it. Or the class is too hard. Perhaps your schedule changes and the hours no longer work for you; maybe you can’t stand the coach… It’s money down the drain, right?

Well yes. But in that case, maybe the Cyprus Sports Club is the solution – because at the CSC, one membership fee will allow you to try a whole host of different classes: everything from SUP to Hatha Yoga, CrossFit to HIT.

“You could try Zumba one day, and Pilates the next,” explains CSC founder Orestis Papapetrou. “You could go for a swim at a pool in the morning, and be lifting weights at a gym in the evening – all under the same membership fee.”

It’s a novel idea, and one which has worked well during the pandemic, when exercise classes have gone online only. But, as measures relax and we all head back to the gym (or sea, or studio), this new scheme is starting to come into its own.

“I had the idea long before the pandemic,” Orestis reveals. A CrossFit trainer himself, he’s been a sportsman from his youth: “Whatever sport you could think of, I was happy to try it; always very positive about the experience. So I wanted to create a venture that allowed people to explore new sports – along with new coaches, new classes, and new communities.

“It’s not,” he adds, “about the money. The CSC is about getting people working out, because being healthy is so much better for you: mind, body and spirit! Think about all the time we waste on activities that have no benefit for our future selves: maybe we spend hours at a café, or days sitting on the couch watching Netflix – especially over the last year! But working out is something that your future self will thank you for – and this way, with CSC, you have the option to explore all sorts of different sports, which is doubly exciting.”

Launched mid-January, the CSC currently offers two types of membership (‘Lite’, with eight classes per month, and ‘Full’, with unlimited check-ins), and is available to people all over the island. While measures are in place, the classes are – of a necessity – online. But while you may not yet be able to enjoy a session of SUP in the sea or yoga in the park, there’s still plenty to choose from.

“It’s a really new venture, but expanding all the time,” explains Orestis. “I came up with it last year and decided to quit my job in a gym and do this full-time. I’d seen so many places offering classes online, but realised there was nowhere that offered all sorts of different sports under one umbrella. So I created a platform where everyone, wherever they are in Cyprus, could join different classes with different coaches. The original idea,” he adds, “was to have this relate to physical locations, and we’re getting back to that after the measures are over. But then, with the pandemic, it was a great opportunity for coaches to host their online classes all in one place.”

Orestis began by finding the coaches and the classes. “It was lots of networking, lots of social media, asking coaches and trainers if they wanted to join the platform,” he explains. “But I got great feedback immediately – right from the start, the trainers were with me.”

Then, he continues, it was a matter of launching the site. And, thus far, the response has been amazing: “People really like the idea of being able to explore different classes all under one membership fee, of becoming part of the CSC community. One of our members,” he smiles, “kept hearing shouts from next door each evening; he investigated, and found out his neighbour was trying different online exercise classes, and signed himself up right away! Another client told me she’d been suffering from depression during the pandemic – she’d had to close her business and had lost all self-esteem. But then she started working out with CSC classes; she tells me it’s really helped, especially because she gets to interact with new people each day.”

This diversity is a big selling point of the CSC: “It’s a huge benefit to be able to explore different classes all the time, interacting with different environments and different characters – people, perhaps, who have a different perspective on life, different opinions from yours, or maybe someone who you would never meet under normal circumstances. Plus there’s the financial benefit,” Orestis adds. “And, come summer, instead of paying 70 euros for a gym membership, and another 70 for your local pool, you pay one membership fee to the CSC and can go wherever you want, whenever you want.”

The first venture of its kind in Cyprus, the CSC operates under the maxim: ‘Sports are life, and we love that life: Enjoy hundreds of different sport activities across the island with the most flexible sports membership in Cyprus!’ And though, with the venture at the very beginning of its journey, ‘hundreds’ may be a slight overstatement, Orestis has big plans for the CSC.

“It’s only been a couple of months,” he says, “but we’re getting new coaches, new sports all the time. New members too. And that’s the most important thing,” he concludes. “Because, here at the CSC, we really do want to help people. Exercise is such a great way to boost both mental and physical health, especially when you’re trying new sports every day!”

For more information, visit https://www.cyprussportsclub.com/