Two years ago actress Iryna Berushcheva couldn’t stand jogging: She thought it was boring.
But that changed after she joined Live.Love Club in 2016: She has already run two half-marathons and is preparing to run another 21-kilometer race in Madrid this summer, and a full 42-kilometer marathon in Berlin in autumn.
And that’s not all of her accomplishments. Berushcheva also joined Live.Love’s swimming program in 2017, and since then has swum 6.5 kilometers across the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey, and taken part in the international Oceanman swimming competition in Benidorm, Spain.
Live.Love, launched in 2016 as a running club, now has more than 300 participants engaged in four activities: swimming, jogging, triathlon and dancing.
Swimming across the Bosphorus or taking part in the Oceanman competition in the open sea are the final challenges of Live.Love’s 6-month swimming program. During the first eight weeks, experienced coaches who have won international competitions teach people how to swim their first kilometer.
“I thought I could swim,” Berushcheva said. “But, as our trainers told us, I was actually just moving from point A to Point B in the water.”
Berushcheva, who used to be a night owl, now wakes up at 5 a. m. and heads for a swimming or running class five times per week. One of her current goals is to swim across Italy’s Lake Orta in June.
Unlike in many running or swimming clubs, members of Live Love have concrete goals and deadlines: It’s either swim their first kilometer in eight weeks, or run their first half-marathon, or take part in a big swimming event after six months.
One of three Live.Love co-founders, Slava Baranskyi, said that concrete goals help people to wake up early and attend training despite cold weather or lack of motivation.
Running is for everyone
All three Live.Love founders were amateurs but passionate sports lovers who managed to combine workouts with business.
Baranskyi, a co-founder of Lifehacker.ru, a website popular in Russia, and Viacheslav Sukhomlynov, who was an executive director at the Tarantino chain of restaurants, were exercising together to take part in the half Ironman triathlon race, which includes a 1.9-kilometer swim, a 90-kilometer bike ride, and a 21-kilometer run.
Later, Sukhomlynov also introduced Baranskyi to Natalya Yemchenko, who is the head of communications in System Capital Management financial and industrial holding, and three of them united to popularize sport in Ukraine.
They held lectures on sports and launched initiative called the Somnenie Challenge (Doubt Challenge): 20 prominent Ukrainians who had never jogged before ran their first race in traditional Ukrainian vyshyvanka embroidered shirts.
“We saw that sport can break down barriers between people. There are programmers, designers, prosecutors, lawmakers and other people — ordinary people like me — who communicate and unite (thanks to sports),” Baranskyi said, adding that networking is one of the biggest advantages of Live.Love.
He said that people come to Live.Love classes not only to train, but to spend time with likeminded people who enjoy sports and work in various spheres. As a result, many of them continue to help out each other with business after the classes.
Baranskyi also said that Live.Love, where a two-month course costs Hr 8,300, was a successful commercial venture. However, they are working on a management methodology that could be used by any sports club and would motivate Ukrainians to exercise more.
Baranskyi is happy that the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa will host the Oceanman international competition this summer, and brags that this year 250 out of 400 participants of Oceanman at lake Orta will be Ukrainians.
Swimmers jump in the Bosphorous river as they take part in the Bosphorus Cross Continental Swim event on July 23, 2017.
Some of Live.Love swimming club members train to swim across Bosphorus Strait, some – to take part in the International Oceanman swimming competition. (AFP)
Motivation
Participants in Live.Love running club gather at 7 a. m. every Tuesday and Thursday at the Athletics Arena in Kyiv. Baranskyi said that it’s especially hard to come to training in winter, when it’s still dark.
“It’s not enough just to sell a subscription, like in gyms,” he said after finishing his workout. “To keep people motivated during training is our primary goal.”
Baranskyi said that the main things that encourage Live.Lovers to train is the community spirit, the personal approach of the trainers, and the placing of club members in different groups according to their level of ability, where they can support each other.
He also said that trainers make sure that participants don’t overdo their training, as burnouts are frequent among amateurs.
Baranskyi, 36, wasn’t a fan of sport until he faced personal problems six years ago. To get his life back on track, he decided to train for a half Ironman race in a year.
“I know all about mistakes that amateurs tend to make, because I made all of them myself (when I started to exercise),” he said with a smile.
Now he wants to make sure that all club members are working out healthily. His team carefully plans their exercises, combining power workouts with stretching, and monitors team members’ heart rates.
Ivan Presniakov, 35, who works as a political analyst, occasionally exercised at home and did some jogging until he joined Live.Love a month ago, and got addicted to sports.
“You understand that getting fit is easier when your motivation is a concrete goal — to run a marathon or a half-marathon,” Presniakov said while running his final lap at the track during the morning training on March 6.
“Moreover, there are coaches and other people who are waiting for you to come and train. You understand that different excuses such as work trips, rainy or snowy weather don’t work anymore, and you regularly work out and improve your results,” he said.
