New Year’s resolutions? Couch potatoes say no way
BERLIN — It’s that time of the year to fulfill those ambitious New Year’s resolutions again: More vegetables, less alcohol, sign up for the gym.
But not for Torben Bertram. Fed up with colleagues who kept pressuring him to join workout sessions during his lunch break, the 39-yearold Berliner founded Germany’s first couch potato club.
Bertram says his Sofa Sports Association is proudly geared toward the non-vegan, non-overachieving, non-career-obsessed masses.
“I just didn’t like this constant pressure to improve myself,” Bertram said, adding that he is the antithesis of many young people in Berlin: Skinny, well-groomed but stressed.
Club activities include swaying back and forth, like in a beer hall; the “Tarzan yell” — beating your chest with your fists and yelling; and the potato chip competition, consisting of eating a plastic cup full of chips without using one’s hands — a favorite among the club’s child members.
The club has been meeting for about a year in bars and pubs in the German capital and now boasts 25 members from 8 to 64 years old. Men, women and children are all welcome. Bertram’s wife initially thought sofa sports was “nonsense” — but she joined anyway, Bertram said.
The father of two, who works in political communications, sports a goatee and has a penchant for cycling shirts that are too tight around the belly.
Bertram said the club only meets in bars with sofas, where everyone is encouraged to participate in the club’s unique fitness program.
The association’s “sofa exercises” aren’t just bar games, Bertram said. Some strengthen back and arm muscles, or burn calories. The beer-hall sway, for example, is said to combine popular German traditions with eastern-Asian forms of body awareness including elements from the Chinese Qigong system of body coordination.
It’s not just fun and games — the club wouldn’t be German without some serious rules and order. Bertram has taken out accident insurance for the group, registered it with fiscal authorities and applied for membership in the regional sports association.
“We are convinced that we will grow and expand across country borders,” Bertram said. “For 2019, we envision a European championship in sofa sport exercises.”
Kirsten Grieshaber is an Associated Press writer.