The morning light reflects lazily on the surface of the chlorine water and I am asked to take a pool boy between my legs. A what? I think, before the trainer quickly reads my perplexed facial expression. »It’s the foam rubber blocks over there on the edge,« he says, pointing to what are actually called ‘pull buoys’ and which are intended to support your legs in the water during swim training.

It’s a little past 7 am on a Tuesday and I’m in the swimming pool of the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports on North Campus at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). My alarm clock rang early because I’m on a mission: I will be participating in as many sports teams as possible during one single day.

KSI is an abbreviation for UCPH student sports, and it does sports education for students, alumni and other interested parties. They only have team training outside of the university’s normal opening hours, which means that I have to get up early and go to bed late to reach the maximum number in a day, namely three. My programme consists of swimming from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., bouldering from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and hip-hop dancing from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Back in the pool and the coach Søren Hammerich corrects my breathing technique when I come back breathless after two laps of crawl. »You just have to turn your head when you need air. Don’t lift your neck, or your body will bend too much in the water.« Sure, yes, I mumble, breathless and sceptical. But after a few attempts to turn my head, I can feel that it does actually ease my flow through the water.

The next four lanes are swum with the so-called S-strokes, where you move the arms in zigzag movements. Although we have been instructed to do it slowly, it feels as if the lactic acid is tearing into my triceps. I had otherwise, with great confidence, signed up for the ‘intermediate’ based on my proud memory of being placed on the good swimming team back in primary school.

The respite gives me the opportunity to conduct a demographic analysis of today’s swim team, something that can easily turn out to be a precarious exercise. I content myself with noting that in my lane there are mostly young people whom I reckon are students, while in the other lanes you can see more wrinkles and grey strands of hair. The lane with the old people is clearly the lane with the fastest average speed.

Søren Hammerich explains that today’s swimming team is made up of two different teams, the intermediate and the experienced. And he confirms to me that there are mostly students in the intermediate class, while the experienced team consists of UCPH alumni who have been swimming together for years. »We usually always have a cup of coffee together in the HCØ cafeteria if you want to join us afterwards,« he says. I would very much like to. The thought of hot coffee, and the renewed breathing technique, makes the rest of the workout go smoothly.

In the dressing room, I get the opportunity to talk to the other participants. One of them studied computer science at UCPH in the last decade, and has hung out at KSI ever since. Another graduated from political science last year and is now swimming his second season. Out by the bike racks, I catch up with a young woman with whom I shared a lane. She is about to graduate as a forestry and landscape engineer from the UCPH Forest and Landscape College. It’s the first KSI team she’s trying out. And that suits her, because it’s cheap and because she’s always wanted to get better at swimming. But now she has to get to work, so she jumps on to an old race bike.

I remember my coffee appointment and make my way through North Campus. The sun now stands perpendicular to the Fælledparken, and I squint up towards it with my chlorine eyes. I walk past the tennis courts, where a couple of early risers are standing in their Wimbledon whites practicing their backhand.

Through an automatic door opener, I enter the stronghold of formulas: The H. C. Ørsted Institute buildings, and I notice that the physicists and chemists are already there, probably preparing to win the next Nobel Prize, by 8:30 a.m. I wonder if the humanities people on South Campus are up yet?

Between the boards and the busy formula crushers I find the cafeteria where the swimming coach sits with two others from the team. »There are usually more of us,« says Søren Hammerich, who explains that they can sometimes fill a whole long table.

To my left is a pregnant woman who has been an active user of KSI for over ten years. She nibbles a bit on her muesli breakfast while explaining that she started dancing burlesque, and has since done mountain biking, running and something called a ‘morning beating’, but she now sticks to cross-fit and swimming.

Including the coach, there are a total of five decades of student sports around the table. I ask what it is about KSI that gets you to stick around for so long. There are many suggestions for this. Good coaches and good training time slots. The low prices.

And then there is the sense of community. On the experienced swim team, there are so many repeat sign-ups year after year that it is like an established swimming club. Some have been swimming on the same team for 30-40 years, and all three of them smile at the thought of a retired doctor of 75 who, reportedly, has a very low membership number at KSI.

The woman sits thoughtfully for a moment and then adds that the most important reason she keeps coming back is the subsequent coffee and chat in the cafeteria. Over the past ten years, she has been in three very different life stages. First as a student, then as a jobseeker and now working. But one constant throughout all these stages has been her KSI training.

We all have to keep up our daily grind, and we need to get going. The coffee meet-up reluctantly breaks up. Stomach rumbling, I head out on to Nørre Allé and bike towards the University Post newsroom in the inner city. I remind myself that I have to eat a big lunch so that I can handle the afternoon’s workout as well. With a restored calorie balance, I will call up Jacob Christian Bertram to learn more about the history of student sports.

In 2018 he published a book in Danish titled ‘A healthy student through the ages’. This was to mark a centenary of student sports at the University of Copenhagen. He takes me back to 1918, when his grandmother and grandfather founded student sports at the University of Copenhagen, which was then called the University’s Student Gymnastics (USG). Since then, student sports have gone in a direct bloodline through his father to him, and the two have, in combination, been active in the association for more than 50 years.

In 1918, the newly established Student Council demanded that the university offer an alternative to the more sedentary studies. This was accepted. In the beginning, you could only go to gymnastics, and it cost half a Danish krone a month. A shower was included in the price however. Two years later, women were also allowed to break a sweat in the form of women’s gymnastics classes where Jacob’s grandmother was the trainer.

Since then, handball and swimming were added, and USG was among the leading handball clubs at the time. After the war, the number of sports increased significantly, and Jacob Christian Bertram mentions specifically basketball, which was introduced to Denmark via USG. This is actually the sport of Jacob Christian Bertram’s own sports history.

He began playing basketball at the age of 14 in the USG youth section and continued when he enrolled at the University of Copenhagen’s law programme, and along the way he became president of the basketball association. Jacob Christian Bertram completed his studies in 1999. But he has since then been affiliated with the association as both referee and basketball coach.

I get the feeling that I am sitting here talking to an heir and next-in-line to the student sports association tradition, and that the future of the association also rests partly on his shoulders. I ask him what it will take for student sports at the University of Copenhagen to be able to celebrate their 200th anniversary.

Historically, UCPH student sports have succeeded in keeping up with the times and being open to what is going on in the surrounding society. You can show up now at KSI’s office on Nørre Alle and suggest that there should be a ‘quidditch’ team, referring to the fictional Harry Potter game, and you will typically be met with: »That sounds exciting. Do you know anyone who can coach it?«

But, Jacob Christian Bertram, adds, the association is dependent on the university continuing to contribute with the physical and financial framework if student sport is to survive at UCPH.

I’m late for my 4 p.m. bouldering training. Leaving history behind me, I traverse the Copenhagen lakes and head for North Campus. This time the training takes place in the large gymnasium in the KF9 hall, and I find my class lined up along an overwhelming climbing wall at one end of the hall.

Bouldering is a climbing sport where you typically climb large rocks or low climbing walls, and where the only safety equipment is mattresses. This wall looks like a large mosaic of grips, and I can’t see anything systematic in it. »It’s a wall of chaos,« the coach says when I ask. »There are no rules and no systematic order, you just have to find your own way«.

We stand in a circle. Everyone seems to be students. The atmosphere in the circle is jovial, and the conversation is about exams and summer holiday plans. Now it’s time for us to go up on the wall, and in the first exercise we have to ‘traverse’, which means that we have to cross the wall sideways. As soon as I lift myself up on the wall, I can feel the swim strokes from this morning. Oh no! I think. But then I get a better grip, and I start to see the benefits of the chaos wall, where you can always find a new and better grip. We repeat the exercise, it goes even better, and I am on a complete high from all the success.

It was only the warm-up, however, and I am reminded of that when the coach walks up to a panel by the wall and presses a button. Slowly, with a sound reminiscent of cranes and construction sites, the climbing wall begins to lower down. It continues and splits into two. Great. »Now we are going to climb overhangs,« the coach says.

Just when I think the workout is over, dumbbells, kettlebells and skipping ropes are brought out

»Now forget everything you’ve learned so far, because when you climb overhangs, different rules apply,« the coach says as she goes over and grabs the wall. Climbing is largely about having control over your centre of gravity. On a straight wall, it is important to keep the body as close to the wall as possible to relieve the strain on your arms and legs. But on an inclined wall, it is too hard for the arms to keep the body close to the wall, so you have to allow yourself to maintain »long arms« and hang like a monkey instead.

In this way we practice different techniques for an hour or so. It seems as if, in this sport, you are constantly balancing between success and failure. One moment you are euphoric about reaching up another step — the next you are lying flat, squashed down onto the mattress. Finally, the wall is raised to a more humane angle, and we end up doing some free-climbing, where my success rate is higher. But the fatigue in my arms and fingers begins to set in, and I am beginning to feel the skin on my fingers.

Just when I think the workout is over, dumbbells, kettlebells and skipping ropes are brought out. Strength training is at least as important as the exercises on the wall, so we finish off with 20 minutes of intense circuit training.

After the training session, I have a breathless chat with two of the other team members. One is a student of economics at UCPH, the other is a student of mathematical modelling at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). They both agree that it is much cooler to train at KSI than in the other popular bouldering clubs around the city. The economics student notes that the price is much lower here. And he adds that many clubs are closed to new members due to the hype over climbing.

I have time to talk to the coach Tilde Ejsing who is a master’s student of psychology. She started rock climbing herself as a KSI student, later became a volunteer, and ended up taking the certification as a coach. One thing that she is particularly fond of are the trips to Sweden, where you climb on real boulders with your own mattresses.

It’s half an hour until my next class, so I sit down on a bench outside the gymnasium and steam off a bit. I refuel with a couple of muesli bars and enter the same old building where I swam this morning. This time I go up the stairs to the top floor, which opens onto a large dance hall. It’s 6.30pm, and I’ve reached the last class of the day: Hip hop dance.

While we wait for a ballet class to finish, I chat with dance coach Thora Mjoll Josepsdottir, who is a student of comparative literature at UCPH. She asks if I am an avid dancer. I deny it. But I tell her about my mission for the day, and that I’ve been mostly nervous about the dancing.

The ballet ends and we step out onto the floor of the imposing dance hall. The floor is of light-lacquered wood, and wall paintings with abstract art in spring colours surround us. The room is shrouded in summer evening light from large windows that offer a view of the entire North Campus. There are six others in the class who are speaking English, maybe they are exchange students.

We sit down out on the floor. The coach puts on a hip-hop song through the sound system. It has a heavy bass and a snare drum that is running like an egg beater. She steps out in front of the class, turns her back to us, and starts dancing slowly to the music. The team immediately begins to imitate her movements, and I understand that the warm-up is like a game of copycat or follow-the-leader.

I can feel that I’m out in deep water. As a prime practitioner of soccer and other mechanical masculine physical exercises with their origins before World War One, I realize that there are parts of my body that I simply cannot move in the same way as the coach. The rest of the team follows suit, and I try hard to keep up.

At times I get it, and I can feel that my steps match the beat of the music. This triggers a great feeling that my body and the music are coming together. But most often I am at a complete loss and happy if I just manage to set one foot right.

After a short water break, Josepsdottir starts again, this time at a frantic pace that makes the warm-up seem like slow dancing. I chase the beat and am really challenged. I manage to get my footing, but then the idea is that something completely different should happen with the upper body. My brain tries to make a connection between the two halves, but with no success.

I decide to go off to the side to observe the workout instead. The coach builds onto the choreography and shows the next steps. First slowly, then quickly, and finally with music. It amazes me how most people on the team only have to watch the steps three times before they can do them. There are smiles every time someone nails it. The joy is contagious, I reassess my relationship with dancing. It’s much harder, and much more fun, than I thought.

The class ends, and it is now 8:30 p.m. I cycle home through a warm Copenhagen. Sweaty, exhausted, and on a huge high.