He’s been up all night with food poisoning, but Linus Holmsäter still looks chipper. The 27-year-old Swede, who has taken Beijing by storm with his weird and wonderful fitness regimen, Heyrobics, bounds into the café for our interview, and in one fluid movement throws off his jacket, jogs to the counter to order an apple juice (no full-fat caramel latte for him), and slides into his chair. Holmsäter’s so fit he oozes health from his pores. Even when he’s sitting, he looks like he’s working out.

“I’m one of Sweden’s best marathon runners,” he says matter-of-factly as he tries to explain what attracts him to Heyrobics. “I don’t train half as much as the other ones because I think running’s so boring, but I feel a lot healthier when I do Heyrobics because I train my whole body.” He runs Heyrobics classes four to five times a week, and when he’s training other instructors he might be doing it all day.

Where did it come from?

There's no wonder he loves it. It’s literally in his blood. Heyrobics was invented by his father. Back in the 1970s, Johan Holmsäter, himself a top athlete, was recovering from an injury and frustrated by not being able to train. He combined his knowledge of sports medicine and an old-fashioned Swedish style of calisthenics from the late 1800s—”think North Korean mass games,” says the son—into a modern group exercise which emphasized fun and fitness for all. “His first lesson was just him and a 70-year-old man,” Holmsäter laughs. Nowadays, some 600,000 Swedes do it on a regular basis.

In Sweden it’s known as “jympa,” a play on the Swedish word for gymnastics, and run as a non-profit organization under the name “Friskis & Svettis”— that’s “healthy and sweaty” in English. It’s evolved into over 24 different kinds of routines including pre-natal exercises to moves that incorporate martial arts. Jympa became Heyrobics in Beijing because it’s easier for non-Swedes to pronounce, Holmsäter explains. When the Heyrobics group went on tour last year, Chinese in the provinces gave them a rousing welcome. “They were screaming ‘hey!’ back at us.”

When Holmsäter was growing up he had no interest in Heyrobics. “My mum and dad did it in the living room, but none of us [himself and his two siblings] wanted to do it. I only started doing it when I was 17.”

How it all started

It was only a hobby for Holmsäter until the summer of 2010 when, frustrated by Beijing’s pollution and traffic interfering with his training runs, he started to hold informal classes with his friends in Chaoyang Park. As more people wanted to join in, Holmsäter decided to take the plunge—six months ago he quit his job with an investment company, and with sponsorship from Anders Wall, Sweden’s most famous philanthropist, he has now dedicated himself full-time to developing Heyrobics in China. It has two guises—one, a non-profit organization (classes are either free or cheaply priced at RMB20 or RMB30 a pop) to offer a fun and inclusive way to get fit and two, a savvy business venture—a kind of premium version of Heyrobics, he explains—for corporate clients. Last year they were hired by sportswear manufacturer Li Ning to run classes around China at their company branches.

Interested Now?

Does it work?

Boogying to an instructor dressed in pink shorts—the Heyrobics trademark—might not look serious, but it’s all based on science, Holmsäter says with a grin. He claims that his regimen burns a third more calories than a regular aerobics workout.

So what can the Swedes teach China—a country that won more gold medals in the last Olympics than any other nation—about exercise?

“We can offer them a joyful way to keep fit!” he says. According to him, Heyrobics is attracting more and more locals. Recently, for the first time, Chinese participants have started to outnumber expats. “It’s a social arena ... We’re getting everyone from students to corporate leaders to their ayis.”

What do the locals think?

While some of the Chinese girls turn up in high heels (“We tell them to take them off”) and are more concerned with being slim than getting fit, Holmsäter says they are learning. “Once they’ve done it they’re really eager to come back,” he smiles. But that might have more to do with Holmsäter’s good looks—lean, blond, blue-eyed, and sporting a disarming smile. He has a Swedish girlfriend, but that hasn’t stopped some saucy chatter on the Chinese forums. “I can’t read Chinese but my friends tell me that, let’s just say, the women aren’t writing any bad things about me!” he laughs.