There is a stretch of coastline between Ayia Napa and Protaras that a lot of people drive past on the way to a beach and very few use for anything else. Cape Greco is a national forest park on the headland between the two towns, and the European long-distance path known as the E4 runs from the eastern end of Ayia Napa around the cape and on to Protaras.
That is a continuous, signposted, publicly accessible piece of coast with sea on one side of it, and it is the best training facility in this part of the island. It costs nothing and it has no opening hours.
What outdoor training actually is
It is worth being unglamorous about this, because the phrase has been used to sell a lot of things. Outdoor training here means bodyweight strength work, movement and mobility, intervals on foot, and hill and step work, done on the boardwalk, the coast path and the open ground above the sea. Cones, mats, a band, and whatever the terrain provides.
It is not a bootcamp in the shouting sense, and it is not a substitute for a barbell if what you need is a barbell. What it is, is training that a large number of people will actually attend.
The honest version of why it works
There is a version of this argument that overclaims, and it is worth not making it. If you go looking, you will find confident statements that training outdoors produces better physical results than training indoors. The research is thinner than that: at least one systematic review concludes that the evidence for an added physical benefit over indoor exercise is limited.
So the claim here is narrower and, we would argue, more useful. The best training programme is the one you keep doing, adherence is where nearly every programme actually fails, and for a substantial number of people the difference between training and intending to train is whether it happens in a room with mirrors or on a path above the sea.
That is not a small claim. It is just a claim about people rather than about physiology.
When to do it, which is not negotiable
Early. For most of the year on this coast that means the hour or two after first light, and in the summer it means it emphatically, because the coast path has very little shade and the rock holds the heat well into the evening. Training through the heat is the long version.
The winter is the season nobody expects to be good and is: mild, quiet, and empty of the summer crowds. Training outside here in January is a pleasure rather than an act of endurance, which is precisely the opposite of the northern European experience and takes visitors a while to believe.
Hiking as training, rather than as a day out
Walking the coast path is the lowest-commitment entry point on this entire site, and it is training rather than a consolation prize: sustained low-intensity work on uneven ground, which is exactly what most people are short of and exactly what nobody sells.
It also suits people the rest of the offer does not: somebody carrying weight they would rather not run with, somebody coming back from an injury, somebody who has decided they are not going to become a gym person and is entirely right about that. Losing weight without joining a gym takes that case seriously rather than treating it as a starting point on the way to something better.
Who it suits
- People who will not join a gym. Not people who should join a gym and are being difficult, but people for whom that is a settled fact and who still want to train.
- Riders and swimmers who need strength work that supports the sport rather than competing with it for the same hours. Personal training covers it, and what a session with a trainer here involves is the longer answer.
- People training for something on this terrain: a swimrun, a coastal race, a long walk. Training on the ground you will race on is worth more than any equivalent session indoors, which is one of the few claims here with no caveat attached. See training for a swimrun and the races on this coast.
- Visitors staying a while. A morning group on the boardwalk is a considerably better holiday than a hotel gym, and it costs the same amount of the day.
What to bring
Shoes with some grip, more water than you think, sunscreen and something on your head. That is the whole list. Everything else is provided or unnecessary, and anyone telling you outdoor training requires equipment has misunderstood the point of it.
Where this lives
Outdoor training is the page for it, and it covers the hiking side as well as the training side. It is also the easiest thing here to try once without committing to anything: 1-to-1 sessions can be booked one at a time, and the consultation exists for the conversation before that if you would rather start there.
Do I need to be fit to join in?
No, and this is the group where that is most true, because bodyweight work scales down further than loaded work does. Everything has a version you can do.
Is it as good as a gym?
For strength beyond a certain point, no. At some stage you need to be able to add load precisely, and a path cannot do that. For general fitness, mobility, conditioning and consistency, it is at least as good and for many people better, because they turn up. Both things are true at once and choosing between them is what the first conversation is for.
Can I do this on my own?
Yes, and you should: the path is public and the sessions are not a secret. What a group and a coach add is that somebody is watching your technique, somebody else is expecting you at six, and the session gets harder as you do. Those are the three things solo outdoor training reliably loses.
Is the coast path suitable in summer?
Early morning, yes. The middle of a July day, no: there is very little shade and the ground radiates. That is the same advice every rider and swimmer here follows, for the same reason, not a warning about a difficult trail.