Spinning his way to the top
> Jason Choong wants to show Kuala Lumpur a new way to fitness
I Na time where most people are spending large amounts of money on chain gyms’ membership and barely utilising them, Jason Choong wanted to bring to Malaysia the idea of boutique gyms. The 27year-old had been abroad and saw there was a gap in the market, and wanted to be the one to fill it.
Having been dabbling in various forms of fitness over the past few years, Choong discovered spinning – a form of indoor cycling that uses a stationary exercise bicycle with a weighted flywheel. But it wasn’t just your ordinary stationary cycling.
Spinning involves endurance coupled with high impact music that spurred you on. Choong thus started Flycycle with his business partner, Kenny Choong.
Have you always been a fitness enthusiast, or did it only start in recent years? Throughout my life, I’ve juggled with constant fluctuation in my weight. I had picked up exercise in many different ways, such as basketball, body building, badminton, and so on – but eventually over time, as I started getting older with less time and more work, I struggled to stay in shape.
When I started working in the corporate world, I found it very difficult to make time for exercise. Every day I would have to walk up a flight of stairs, and this itself was already an obstacle for me. I had trouble catching my breath with each step, and it became my breaking point. I realised I needed to start getting active again.
I figured I couldn’t continue living life the way I did, and I could not do certain things that my friends were doing like hiking up Broga Hill, or playing a full game of basketball or badminton.
How did you find out about spin classes? I can still remember my first ride: I was just about starting to get back into shape, and during my travels a friend of mine had asked me to join a spin class. I struggled to keep up, but after the first class I knew I was hooked; it would be the only way I would do my cardio. Spin classes have been around in major gyms for a long time.
But for us at Flycycle, it’s the core of our business. That is why I set out to create an experience like no other. These days, on my travels I will always visit boutique fitness studios in America, Europe, and Asia. It’s really amazing to see how everyone has something unique.
What spurred you to start Flycycle in Malaysia? We’ve seen it abroad: the community of people interacting and making friends – people pushing each other to be their best selves. That’s what we wanted to create.
When we took out the plans to create what Flycycle would be today, we have always put priority on creating a space that is easy and safe for people to be social.
There is so much community that comes out of these rides, and it’s great to see people making new friends who want to see each other succeed. They come for the fitness, but what they get out of it is so much more.
We heard that you are expanding Flycycle to have more varieties of classes other than spin classes – could you elaborate more on that? To me, Flycycle is more than just a bike; we have always treated it as an experience, and we hope to bring this experience into a variety of products that people will enjoy. We have taken our time with this, and have studied many new fitness concepts abroad.
This time, we are starting over with a little more experience, and we hope the people would really enjoy what we have spent the past six months creating.
Why did you decide to expand Flycycle to include more types of exercise? I think like everything in life, we need variety. Millennials want options and different products that you can mix up into their routine. Each new product that we are adding will complement Flycycle, and helps you achieve your fitness goals faster in a more enjoyable manner.
What future plans do you have for Flycycle? In the near future we do plan to expand across Malaysia and Asia. We hope to grow this home-grown brand into something that can be enjoyed across Asia. As we are growing now, I can understand the importance of growing into a big beloved brand, rather than one that becomes a profitdriven chain.