Meet Estonia’s fitness figures: ViimsiSport owner Mart Poola

Mart Poola is the founder and driving force behind ViimsiSport, a well-known fitness club in Viimsi. Below, he talks openly about how he got into sport, became an instructor and went on to open his own club in Viimsi.

Fitness instructors have usually been energetic and involved in various sports since childhood. What sports have you tried, and when?

I’ve been involved in sport since I was very young. My very first classes were in acrobatics at the gymnastics club ”Piruett”, and after that I tried all sorts of activities. I’ve played basketball, floorball and tennis, and I even attended a swimming school.

A serious injury when I was younger was a major setback for my training. I had such a bad fall outside school that I fractured my spine and dislocated two ribs. Recovery was a long process and changed the entire course of my training. After that injury, I weighed over 120 kg and was completely unfit.

Everything changed when I discovered the gym and proper nutrition. At first, I lost weight very quickly, 30kg in 2 months, but later my approach became healthier.

When and how did you become an instructor? What classes do you teach?

After I’d been going to the gym for a while, a gym trainer suggested I try a BodyPump group fitness class. My first thought was: why on earth would I want to go bouncing around an aerobics studio…

After the first half hour of a BodyPump class, I was hooked and completely addicted! I enjoyed it so much that when I saw an instructor training course coming up, I kept asking my parents until they gave it to me as a birthday present. That’s how I became Estonia’s youngest BodyPump instructor at the time — I was just 16 years old.

I wasn’t a very good instructor at first. I was very nervous and always worried about everything, but over time my confidence and fitness improved, and I became more and more of a ”real” instructor.

After BodyPump, BodyCombat came into my life too, and it’s still my secret love. Unfortunately, I don’t currently have time to teach it, although I’d really like to.

You’re a very young fitness club owner. Where did the idea and the courage to open your own club come from? What training do you offer, and what sets ViimsiSport apart from other fitness clubs?

The idea of opening my own fitness club came after I returned from England. I was still studying at university, but circumstances forced me to return to Estonia. I’d been studying here by distance learning for about a year and had settled back into life in Estonia when my partner suggested I could find more to do than teaching the occasional class at various fitness clubs.

I started looking into renting space at a local kindergarten, for example, so I could teach classes. But I soon realized that to make it profitable, I’d have to travel from place to place with a BodyPump barbell rack, which wasn’t very realistic. The first, smaller ViimsiSport was born on 8 September 2012, when we opened a studio on Kaluri tee in Viimsi. The small ViimsiSport offered only group fitness classes, but with a wide range of programs. These included 6 different LesMills programs, alongside other classes.

Since then, ViimsiSport has moved and grown. We opened the larger ViimsiSport on 8 October 2013 at Sõpruse tee 5, in Viimsi Sports Hall.

ViimsiSport is an innovative club in quite a few ways. For example, we’re the first sports center in Estonia to offer access to sports facilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means you can make use of everything in our building — the gym, group fitness classes, tennis, badminton and other sports — at any time, whatever your daily routine.

Our innovation goes beyond being open around the clock: we’re also the first place in Estonia where you can try virtual workouts. This means we’ve recorded our own instructors’ classes and use IT systems to project those workouts onto the wall of the group fitness studio whenever a member wants one and the studios are available.

Our group fitness timetable offers Estonia’s widest selection of LesMills programs, including LesMills Sh’Bam, the brand’s newest dance workout, which is available exclusively at our club. Alongside Spinning and gym training, I currently teach LesMills BodyPump, LesMills CXWORX and LesMills GRIT Series classes. I’m studying sports medicine at university and researching the prevention of overtraining.

Do you have time for hobbies too? What are they?

Besides teaching classes, I enjoy photography and hiking in my free time. I’m also generally interested in anything to do with technology and IT systems.