Big news! We are now a licensed CrossFit affiliate. When you come to train with us, nothing has changed other than the sign on our door: CrossFit IRONSKY.
Nothing will feel different next Monday when you come in because we’ve been training this methodology for 13 years and coaching it for 10. Affiliating didn’t make us start doing CrossFit, it just puts the name behind the method. 13 years went into this decision. Here’s why.
What Changes Now That We’re a CrossFit Affiliate?
Honestly? Not the training. The next class you walk into will look a lot like the one you walked into last, because the method hasn’t changed since we opened in 2019. Same whiteboard, same warm-up, same coach asking you to fix your setup before you touch the bar. What changes is the commitment. Being a CrossFit affiliate ties us back to the community that taught us all of this in the first place, and it holds us to a standard we don’t get to set for ourselves.
Why Did It Take Us 13 Years to Affiliate?
Because we didn’t come to CrossFit as gym owners shopping for a business model. We came to it as athletes.
Long before IRONSKY existed, we were training and coaching inside other CrossFit affiliates, first as members, then as coaches. That’s where we learned what an affiliate really is, from the inside. We learned what a good class feels like when you’re standing in the middle of one, we learned how to scale a workout for someone with a wacky shoulder and 40 minutes to spare, and we learned how a room full of strangers turns into a group of people who notice when you’ve missed a week. So by the time we opened our own doors, the methodology wasn’t something we’d bought into. It was simply how we understood fitness: measurable, repeatable, and open to absolutely anyone willing to show up.
We compete, too, individually and as a gym, online and onsite, and we’ve reached the Quarterfinals of the CrossFit Open. But if we’re honest, the scores were never the point. Every year we travel as a group to events around Europe: the Athens Throwdown, the Belgrade Games, the Amsterdam Throwdown. Members book flights together, share hotel rooms, warm up together, and end up shouting themselves hoarse in the corner of a loud venue for someone they train beside every Tuesday night. Every trip, we meet a gym that gets it. Same standards, same culture, different country.
Who’s Actually Coaching You?
We take the credentials seriously, and we think you should ask about them, because you’re trusting us with your body and your time.
Phedias Demou has walked the full CrossFit trainer path: Level 1, Level 2, and the Certified CrossFit Trainer, or CCFT, which is Level 3. The CCFT is the accredited top of that ladder, and it doesn’t sit there once you’ve earned it. It has to be renewed every three years with continuing education, documented coaching hours, and a current CPR certificate. He’s also an ELEIKO certified strength coach.
Constantinos Polychronis: our co-owner and head coach, holds an MSc in sport science.
Theodosia Demetriou holds a BSc in sports science and medicine, her CrossFit Level 1, the CrossFit Gymnastics course, and she runs our kids classes. That gymnastics course wasn’t a box-ticking exercise. It’s the reason our pull-up and handstand progressions are built the way they are.
Then there’s the education we do on our own time. We read the CrossFit Journal and the training guides, and then we read them again. We watch movement breakdowns, we go to seminars, we follow the arguments happening inside the methodology, including the ones we disagree with because a coach who stopped learning in 2019 is running a 2019 gym.
What Does All of This Feel Like in a Class?
Thirteen years of training. Ten years of coaching. The certificates, the competitions, the flights, the reading, all funnel down into three things you can actually feel on the floor.
- Coaching that’s worth paying for. That means someone is genuinely watching you move, knows what they’re looking at, and will scale you back on the day that calls for it.
- A community you’d show up for even when you don’t feel like training.
- Coaches who still care after a decade of coaching. That’s the one we’re proudest of, and it’s the hardest thing to fake.
Our whole philosophy fits into one line we hold ourselves to: good coaches know when to push, great coaches know when to protect.
What we want from here is simple. A gym in Larnaca where ordinary people train well for decades, not months. Bigger space, same purpose, more people through the door. Becoming a crossfit affiliate just makes the commitment official. So if you’ve been curious about CrossFit but you’re not sure it’s for you, come and find out before you decide. Book a free intro session with CrossFit IRONSKY, meet our coaches, and let us scale your first workout to exactly where you are today.
