Children's fitness trainer Oleksandr Vertii. (source: Archive of O. V.)
This story is also available in Ukrainian and Slovak.
Driving a cab in Bratislava, Oleksandr Vertii realised one day that the job didn’t make him content. In Slovakia, his family’s new home, it took him some initial courage, and several missteps, to eventually endeavour to start a job that he’s been good at for many years and that he enjoyed doing back in Ukraine: a kids coach.
When he showed up at his local gym in Ružinov, one of 17 Bratislava boroughs, to offer his services, he was told that he could use the gym to carry out his classes but he would have to find his clients himself.
“In Ukraine, a coach is often paid by the gym. They work with clients of the gym,” the 36-year-old man tells The Slovak Spectator.
Determined to give it a go, he shared posts about his classes on social media, including a Facebook group for mothers in Bratislava. Parents gradually began to bring their children to his classes. In a couple of weeks, he expanded his client base of satisfied parents to such an extent that he didn’t have to work part-time jobs anymore.
“It was always easier for me to find a common language with children than with adults. I never get tired of communicating with them,” Vertii says.
His first client was a Slovak boy who couldn’t do a single pull-up. Today, the Ukrainian coach notes, this boy can do 16 pull-ups. He currently trains about 30 children, both Slovak and Ukrainian. His classes aren’t only about sweating in the gym. Vertii believes that a kids' coach should offer a wide range of activities to help children grow and not bore them. He regularly goes for a jog, cycles, plays ball games, swims and rollerblades with them.
“It’s important to maintain a child’s interest in training because motivation is the most important thing,” Vertii argues.
From teaching to sales and back
Educating children on a healthy lifestyle came quite naturally to Vertii.
Born in the suburbs of Odessa, a Ukrainian port city by the Black Sea, the Ukrainian was raised in a family of teachers: his grandfather taught history, his grandmother and mother were primary school teachers, and his father was a football coach and a physical education teacher at a local school. It was thanks to his father that Vertii fell in love with sports. They played football, volleyball, tennis and table tennis together. In his youth, Vertii also tried boxing and wrestling.
Thanks to his upbringing, the Odessan says that he feels confident in any sports discipline - both in team and individual sports. Still, his path to coaching wasn’t short.
In 2010 he graduated from university in Odessa and became a physical education teacher like his father. A first-time teacher job, however, wasn’t well paid in Ukraine, Vertii notes. He decided to quit the job.
“I then used to work as a sales manager,” Vertii says. “But in the end, I realised that I wanted to teach children and pass my love for sports on to them.”
As he speaks, a funny moment from several years ago occurs to him.
“At a recruiting agency, they helped me find a position in sales but when the topic of sports came up in our conversation, I created a detailed training plan for them within an hour,” he recalls. “They said that I shouldn’t waste my time and go train people.”
A few years later, Vertii indeed received a call from his friend. He was a boxing coach and this friend told him about a vacancy at the gym where he was working. Although the pay was similar to a teacher’s salary, Vertii could at least work out for free and perform the job that he always loved and was trained for. In 2013, he decided to take up the position of a self-defence coach and began to work with children again.
The gym even named him, in 2021, the best children’s fitness employee. The facility was part of a popular gym chain in Odessa. Later, he was promoted and became a methodologist for children’s fitness.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Vertii also teaches his nine-year-old son, Mark, to love sports. (source: Archive of O. V.)
Teaching children to love sports
Vertii has been training children for nearly 15 years now; he’s lived and coached children in Slovakia for the past two years.
“Nothing else I enjoy as much as coaching,” he confesses.
But it’s not a common thing to see a fitness coach train a child in the gym in Slovakia. For most coaches, it seems to be easier to work with grown-ups than kids. The Ukrainian stresses that it’s necessary to find a common language in regard to training children and to pay much more attention to them in order to prevent injuries.
“Children cannot be trained in the same way as adults. A child is strong, their muscles are strong, but their bones are soft,” the experienced fitness coach says.
On his Instagram page, he shares tips for exercises suitable for kids.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Vertii also teaches his nine-year-old son, Mark, to love sports. The lesson that he has learned over the years is that it’s important to listen to a child, become their friend, and only then become their coach.
“As a father, I made mistakes,” he admits. “I once forced my son to do judo though he didn’t want to do this sport. About a month later, when I was taking Mark from his judo training, he was crying. I pondered: ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ That day I promised to myself that I’d never ever force him into anything because sports should bring joy, not torture.”
While judo turned out to be the wrong sport for Mark, Vertii says that he managed to arouse his son’s interest in wrestling by simply offering to wrestle together. When Mark was five, Vertii recalls, he watched a cartoon in which a postman delivered mail on a horse. Soon after his son asked him to teach him to ride a horse. Vertii agreed.
“And this is how he became involved in equestrian sports. This passion of his lasted for two years,” the Ukrainian says.
But Vertii also has dreams.
He hopes to open his own gym, both for adults and children, in Bratislava one day. He says that he already has a business plan. What he still needs to find is an investor.
“The gym’s motto would be ‘respect for everyone’,” he reveals.
This article was created thanks to the UNESCO programme "Supporting Ukrainian Refugees Through Mass Media", financed by the Japanese government.
