Aigul S, a pleasant middle-aged mother of three with near-perfect English, heads a small team of sales reps in an upmarket chain of gyms in the city of Almaty. Already a fixture of the local fitness industry for two decades, she has seen her job change since the very early days of battling to persuade people that a membership in her quality gyms was worth, for many of them, two (or more) months’ salary.
As recently as 2010, the fitness industry in Kazakhstan, while visible on the horizon of the emerging leisure economy, was by its own admission ‘undeveloped’, certainly compared to Western countries, where you can find gyms within gyms. The market in the UK, for example, is so saturated that lower prices are often the only advantage one place may have over its rival across the road.
An entire set of dumbbells, the full 0.5 to 70 kilo range, doesn’t guarantee members any more, your more enthusiastic gym rat having long since understood that lifting more weight doesn’t always get better results. As the song says: It’s not what you lift, it’s the way that you lift it. Well, something like that, anyway. I never was much for pop music.
In the absence of any serious competition, the early days of gyms in the main Kazakh cities were characterised by high prices and an enormous gulf in quality between the upmarket gyms with everything, and those cheaper options, whose floor space was just enough to cram in a half set of dumbbells (the 1 to 25 kilo range, if you were lucky).
Fast forward to 2026, and the industry is now omnipresent in larger Kazakh cities, Astana and Almaty each boasting world-class fitness centres as good as you would get in New York and London – and a lot of options down the scale from there.
FitnessBlitz
Meanwhile, FitnessBlitz (not where Aigul works) is a well-established chain of gyms in Almaty and Shymkent, plus eight other cities across the country. While only packed out at peak time, they are busy fitness clubs with new people turning up to buy memberships almost every day.
saqtimes.kz met up with their founder, Daniyar Moldakhmet, who echoes the thoughts of many of his members that their centres reflect the needs of the clients without unnecessary frills. Some may describe ‘Blitz, which takes its name from the German word meaning flash, as ‘a man’s gym’, while their trainers would doubtless question the verdict, claiming that there is a place for everybody, whatever their goals.
In any case, the atmosphere here is one that says hard work, rather than pampering. In the UK, many more serious gym goers might avoid some clubs, scorning them as ‘holiday camps’, but there’s no way they’d say that about FitnessBlitz.
“There used to be a big difference between the premium-class gyms and the economy-class choices in Almaty,” said Daniyar, in excellent English, a graduate in Finance from an Australian university and former interpreter for an international economic cooperation organisation in Tehran. His background is in finance, but he has run FitnessBlitz for over 16 years now.
“These days, the gyms in the latter category have caught up and are a valid alternative, offering almost as much as the established market leaders. They also cost a lot less in most cases.”
In truth, this is a fair reflection of the situation, not just a claim made by a man who has a vested interest in attracting and keeping members. So many people committed to training in Almaty these days recognise that the only gyms that are ‘superior’ to FitnessBlitz, for most people, are the ones that invariably cost four times as much to join.
“We have also introduced some things which add value but wouldn’t be classed as frills, right down to the paper towels we have around both main training rooms.”
Although this might seem just too simple, it’s one of a number of things which show how Daniyar and his team have put a lot of thought into their clubs. Add to that the kit they have for all manner of training, the go-hard-or-go-home ten-ton (seemingly) barbells, or the pink 2.5-kilo kettle-bells lined up in the corner.
A gym shouldn’t be too neat and tidy – it has to seem well used. There has to be the feeling that this is a place where you get to work.
But at the same time, if the floor is full of discarded weight plates, it can become a safety risk. The trainers patrol the two main halls to check that the latter doesn’t become an issue, be reassured, but there is no pristine stack of shiny bars that you feel guilty dislodging either.
“Before 2020, most people who came through the doors either did so to lose weight or build muscle, but since that year, there are so many more people who understand the value of looking after themselves for the sake of their general health.
“People eat better, live better, and training in a gym is part of a more holistic approach to being healthier. We have many members who have no desire to ‘bulk up’ in any way.
“We have a few different options in our other gyms, including spinning at our Samal Almaty branch.”
Spinning is known as cycle in Kazakhstan, something larger gyms offer, but where there is limited space, it’s obviously not a standard service across the board. In the Iskra branch of FitnessBlitz, it isn’t available, but in what was once a cinema, a focal point of social life back in the days of the Soviet Union, the two generously-sized rooms are set aside for just about everything else. There’s even a boxing ring, complete with trainer.
Members may often be younger than 30, but they have many who are older, and some retirees, too. With the student discount they offer (not something all other gyms have available), they attract people from one of Almaty’s many institutes, and as off-peak memberships cost less, the gym is busy all day long.
“It’s easier than it was in the past to attract new members; people are more informed than they were, even five years ago.
“Looking to the future, I don’t think we need to make wholesale changes to our services. I think that now that the fitness industry has caught up with other countries, people understand better what they need.
“The previous decade was largely characterised by people looking for something new, and gyms evolved in response to this, adding various new disciplines, including crossfit and body combat.
“Today, fitness clubs have simplified, to an extent which can be hard to achieve, in some ways.
“Most of our members want a good club with good service, good ventilation. 90% of them don’t require frills.”
Some of the costlier gyms give you towels, which is certainly nice when it happens, but won’t make you slimmer or fitter, and people are very conscious of why they want to buy a membership and what gets results. I guess it would be for FitnessBlitz to say if they plan to consider this when developing their service, but chances are they don’t see the point, mostly because their customers don’t either.
FitnessBlitz has a dozen, or so, trainers in each of its clubs, but Daniyar explained that this is an area in which Kazakhstan hasn’t fully developed, and that even nationally, there aren’t enough recognised training courses for fitness instructors.
“Some clubs offer in-house training for the staff, and we are one of those. But we don’t expect our coaches to be doctors; we need people who can guide people from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active one, providing them with the necessary motivation and information along the way.
“We are meticulous when recruiting trainers; the necessary skills are the bare minimum, but 70% of them don’t have extensive medical training.”
It’s likely to be the same in the UK, too, as with the philosophy of the gym, that being to improve lives by bettering strength and fitness.
Some of their success stories back this up, not so much the number of people who pay to come back, but the fact that they do so because they can see it all working. And while not many of the members in FitnessBlitz are quite as big as one or two of their staff, what matters is that they have made progress on their own terms.
And would you believe, they have just hit their 60th marriage between club members, too?