This trainer took bodybuilding, fitness to another level in Valley

M Aamir Khan

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, February 28

Even as leading international health club chains have of late forayed into the summer capital, one of the city’s oldest gym ‘Club Heavy Duty’ continues to remain one of the favourites with fitness lovers, bodybuilders and sportspersons.

Founder of the gym Irfan Ali (46), who has been in the business for nearly a quarter of a century and so far trained over 50,000 people, is also credited with having popularised bodybuilding in the Valley.

“Though I had gone to Bangalore to do engineering, bodybuilding was always my passion. I first started training people in 1994 and opened my first gym in Bangalore in 1995. I sold it in 1998 before returning home for good and opened the first unit of ‘Club Heavy Duty’ gym at Gojwara (in Srinagar) in 1998,” said Ali, who is popular for imparting training not only among bodybuilders and rugby players but also women and the elderly.

Ali said he had opened another gym in the Barbar Shah area. Now he has ‘Club Heavy Duty’ in Jawahar Nagar, which he has been running since 2006.

He said though bodybuilding was practised before the eruption of militancy in the Valley more than 28 years ago as well, there was a dearth of professional trainers then.

“When I came here, fitness was a no-no thing….though people would train, they did not know the technicalities and mostly did weight-lifting. As I had gained experience outside, I took them to a new level. It has been a beautiful journey since I have trained over 50,000 people over the past 24 years,” said Ali, an American Council on Exercise (ACE) certified trainer.

“After militancy, there were no cinema halls or places for recreation. We gave people a place to do gyming and treat it as a stress buster. Now, people right from teenagers to the elderly in their seventies come to train,” he added.

Ali said local bodybuilders had started doing well in competitions. “It gives me great happiness when my students do well. Recently, a young bodybuilder named Omar Farooq won a competition in Thailand and then stood second in his category in the Mr Asia competition,” he said.