Creating a community through fitness

Finding a place for herself and others through staying fit - that’s the recipe Alex swears by for being part of something bigger.

Photographs: Adam Blanchard

Text: Michaela Medveďová

It’s just exercise. Try telling that to Alex Beck, a Brit and Swiss national living in Copenhagen who turned her outdoor strength and body combat classes into a thriving, close-knit community where everyone feels they belong.

A true community that’s here to stay

Alex must be a familiar sight to Copenhageners by now. Since 2020, she has been providing people with a challenging yet safe and fun way to get stronger through her outdoor group training sessions.

Few would guess that Alex had pivoted from a job in the corporate world to being an internationally certified personal trainer and a nutritional coach. She’s never considered doing anything related to physical activity as a job, but her husband encouraged her, pointing out that everyone already asks her how to achieve their physical goals anyway—so why not choose it as a new path?

While training people outside was simply a temporary solution in the coronavirus times, it became her brand and something her clients appreciate. “I’ve grown the strength training team quite considerably since - I think we’re around 60 in the team now. I’ve also grown my body combat lessons (full-body exercises incorporating martial arts or boxing elements) and encourage people to integrate some cardiovascular training with strength training. Body combat is fun for me, so it’s an easy thing to say: come and try something that’s going to be fun rather than force yourself to go running if you don’t like it!” She keeps it fun with great music flowing right into the ears of her students thanks to her signature SilentFit headphones - but mostly by staying active and connected with all of her clients.

Because the thing is, for Alex, they are her forever clients. She loves seeing her clients evolve, get stronger, and have a good laugh about just about anything together. “I build loyalty in my classes. There’s a sense of commitment and belonging I’ve created within this community. Of course, you can follow a rigid program yourself. But most times, people come to me because they don’t know what to do and need accountability. So people come for the workouts, yes, but they also come because people are waiting for them. I know every single one of my members, I know their names, their birthdays, and their children. I know what’s going on in their lives. Everyone comes to the class with a different mood every time - we don’t always have a great day and we don’t always want to lift heavy. If people tell me these things in advance - and they are good at doing so - I can make sure to push when they need to be pushed and know when to pull back, so they feel safe.”

And they must feel that way because they stick with Alex and her training for a long time, and only leave her community if they move away or temporarily step back because of pregnancies. “But they come back, and then I get to rock their babies”, laughs Alex. We joke about opening a class for babies in the future - but Alex actually has a specialisation in pregnancy and postpartum. It’s not the most challenging workouts, but they are important. She knows it from her own experience as she was getting back into physical activity after her daughter’s birth - she needed something to recompose her body and be there for her family. “People also need to stay strong during their pregnancies so delivery is easier, recovery is easier - and hopefully they can pass this philosophy on.”

From EasyJet to Emirates

Her pregnant clients who can’t lie on the floor outdoors in the winter months are one of the reasons why Alex, on top of her signature outdoor training, decided to open her own studio in August. “Another reason is that when it does get cold in the winter, my clients never feel it, but I do - and when I have back-to-back sessions, I have no place to go to the bathroom, so I can’t drink anything warm, because then I would have to go to the bathroom,” laughs Alex. In her new studio, she has a courtyard so she can still take her clients outside - but has expanded her offering to accommodate those who need or would prefer to be inside, like, for example moms with newborns. “Plus, they have me and the equipment to themselves, along with a sense of privacy. I feel that if you are a new joiner or a beginner, it’s always nice with a bit of privacy to be able to talk about things like breastfeeding or pelvic floor. Having the studio has also given me the possibility to deliver different things - I’m, for example, planning on having restorative sessions.”

But her main business area - and a huge source of energy - is still coaching her outdoor teams. It’s like she’s running two parallel businesses. “But for those that been with me forever, they say: Alex, it doesn’t matter, if you were on the moon, we’d come to you. And they say we went from Easyjet to Emirates.”

Well, she also spent a lot of effort on finding the perfect place. Earlier this year, she bid on a different place, and someone overbid her by 20%. It made her very sad - but also made him realise that finding her own space was more important to her than she thought. So she put her heads together with her husband, a Danish independent designer, and they decided to look for a bigger place that could hold both her studio and their common office and his new creative workshop. And by pure coincidence, she found one for rent - walking down the street she lives on. “The owners of the building were keen to see what noise level there was going to be or if I would be working weekends and evenings. The process was long for me, but I had help from one of my clients who is specialised in business rental law. She helped me with reading the contracts - 33 pages of Danish law - over. I was just like: Can I ask you for a big favour?” laughs Alex.

Even though she had her first client in the studio literally the day she first opened, Alex and her husband continued to build and equip the studio. Working together is nothing new to them. Since she started her independent training business, he’s been doing all her communication and graphic design.

Through curiosity to language and fitness

But when we chat, Alex is alone at the office they share. Both her husband and her 10-year-old daughter are at home, sick. Alex simply benefits from spending so much time out in the fresh air.

“My husband and I often work out together, too. My daughter only showed a little bit of interest, so I didn’t force her into it. I want to encourage her to understand the reasoning behind the workouts and why we want to stay strong, healthy and fit. She’s now starting to think that she could maybe bring a friend and explore training a bit, though. Of course, at that age, I can’t do proper workouts with lots of weights - but I can show them how to move their bodies better. How a squat or a lunge would work. I never had that opportunity as a child because my parents weren't into functional training, although they have always encouraged and supported my ever-expanding love for all sorts of sports, from athletics to horse-riding! So the first time somebody told me to do a squat, I was like - a what?”

It’s important for Alex not to force her daughter into anything. She knows how forcing things can backfire and discourage instead. That doesn’t mean they don’t spend as much time outside as their busy schedule permits - just Alex, her husband, their daughter, and their adorable spaniel called Peanut, always walking and talking, sightseeing in town, making sure we get the fresh air.

If you passed them on the street, you’d hear the family speaking English together. “When it’s the three of us, we really prioritise English. If she’s only with her dad, they’ll speak Danish. Our daughter mostly prefers to speak Danish nowadays, but she’s perfectly bilingual. It’s just sometimes easier for her to put a Danish word in the middle of an English sentence. I have to pretend not to know what it means, and she has to come up with the English words. She just wants to tell the story really fast, and sometimes, the words come in Danish.” But Alex’s daughter actually loves being bilingual - and she even speaks English online with her friends when they are playing games together.

“From my side, she could also learn French - and it’s my fault that we gave up on a third language. But it’s been a bit too much to integrate another one. However, she’s been very curious about French. She is now on her 80-day Duolingo streak! She made it a little competition with her grandma,” smiles Alex. Raising her daughter showed her just how much the times are evolving. While a lot of the parents are still on the fence about allowing screen time, Alex actually allows and welcomes it to a point. “I agree there should be limits and perhaps no screen time before bed. But I think her screentime is actually socialising my daughter a lot because she is online with her friends. And, of course, if she were looking at dumb stuff on YouTube the whole day, it wouldn’t be okay. But when she’s on YouTube, she uses it to learn things. She’ll watch a tutorial and then spend two hours doing the thing she just learned. We’re all on screens. Her dad is a graphic designer, always working on a screen. We can’t prevent it.”

Summers in Portugal and double Christmas

There are also a lot of cultures Alex and her family can draw on. Born in the Cayman Islands to a mom from Guyana and a Scottish dad, Alex and her family lived in Switzerland for most of her life, and she became Swiss by naturalisation at 18. In her twenties, she moved with her then-boyfriend to Brussels and Malmö, and after breaking up, she found a job in an advertising agency across the Øresund bridge, where she met her now-husband.

“We’re very open about different cultures and talk a lot about where we came from. My little brother is still in Switzerland, my sister is in Dubai, my older brother is in Scotland, and my parents actually moved to Portugal two years ago - they just picked themselves up in their 70s and went to a country where they don’t speak the language nor had any friends, which is a very brave move! They are now fully settled and love their new life. So my daughter has been to all places now, and she’s curious about everything.”

Having a multicultural family also means having to integrate holidays and other customs. Well, in the best way - just like celebrating both the 24th and the 25th of December as Christmas. “Santa comes the night of the 24th, that’s very important. But we also have the nisse and the door and the calendar. However, she’s ten now, so she’s starting to doubt a little. I always tell her it’s like Tinkerbell - she dies when you stop believing in her.” They have Festelavn and Easter, and when October hits, Alex’s daughter decorates the entire house. “We’ve just embraced everything.”

That also includes the infamous darkness during Danish winter. Alex is trying her best to make it fun. During exercise, she combats the darkness with earphones that glow in the dark; at home, her daughter thinks it’s the best thing when it rains, and she can put on her tracksuit and drink hot chocolate at home. “We try to embrace it. Yes, it’s dark, but that just means Christmas is closer! Maybe it will even snow this year. It’s thinking about all the nice things that can happen rather than thinking: I’m so depressed and tired because of all the darkness.”

Find your place of belonging

After 15 years in Denmark, Alex should be a pro at handling the Danish winter—and all things Danish. But her relationship with the country had to evolve. Initially, she found Denmark tough, inflexible, and overly scheduled, but she also found it to be a relief when it came to the work culture.

“I think after such a long time, your relationship with Denmark stops evolving. I’ve built my business, I’ve built my community, which means I feel like I belong somewhere. I know I will see the same people every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday. I feel like I’m part of something bigger than just being in Denmark. I built my community based on my experience of coming to a gym when I moved to Denmark, and nobody talked to me. I wanted to make sure people felt welcome every single time and that new people were automatically embraced. Maybe that’s key for all foreigners here - finding the place where they feel like they belong.”