Hello! Welcome to Strength And Gain. My name is Akash and I’m from India. I have been a personal trainer for a couple of years now and been working out for more than 8 years prior to that. All in all, I have been a health freak for more than a decade now and it’s going to continue for the next decade as well. Fitness is my first love and passion and always will be.
My story– Growing up I was a chubby kid and it made me very self-conscious about myself. I wanted to join the gym, but I was kind of shy and had some inferiority complex issues. I used to think gyms were only for bodybuilders. Back then, the gym culture was not very popular in my city.
So finally, one day I decided to join the gym. It took me 2 years just to make that decision (Ridiculous! I know). Anyway, I joined a local gym and from the day I started lifting weights, I just fell in love with it.
Starting out, my only goal was to lose some weight and if possible, look a bit aesthetic in the clothes.
Initially, it was very frustrating as I was not getting any desired results and it took me almost 2 years just to lose 5 kg (11 lbs ).
Back then, I knew nothing about nutrition or proper training program. I listened to all kinds of suggestions other people offered me in the gym and tried it all and didn’t get any substantial results.
I thought maybe I had poor genetics and that’s why I’m was having such a hard time losing weight. There were times when I seriously thought about quitting. It was very frustrating, but the good thing that I did was I didn’t quit.
By the time I graduated from college, it had been almost five years into my fitness journey. I had a decent body shape, but nothing to brag about.
I got recruited in ACC Cements which is one of India’s top cement companies. Anyone who’s working in a cement plant will tell you this one thing; there is no job timing. 24*7 you have to be available in case anything breaks down. The plant was set up in a remote area and there was only a small gym in the company’s clubhouse. The work and the work hours were so hectic that by the time I got out of there, the gym would usually close.
As I was living in a shared room allotted by the company I couldn’t prepare my own food and had to depend on the canteen food which was in no way a healthy meal. In the next one and a half years I lost all the progress that I made in the last 5 years. I had a serious decision to make: Job security or my health and fitness. It was quite an easy decision to make. I submitted my resignation letter to the company.
I started reading lots of articles and blogs related to fitness and nutrition.
Somewhere I read if you seriously want to gain in-depth knowledge about any field, start reading books written by good authors about it. And I started reading books.
The more I read the more I realized that I had no idea how to train right, how to create a good workout schedule or what nutrition and diet actually meant. The realization hit me hard that for the past five years everything I did was wrong and a waste of time.
I always blamed my poor genetics for not getting any proper results but actually, it was my lack of knowledge.
I wanted to gain as much knowledge possible about everything regarding fitness and the actual science behind it. As I had no plans of wasting another 5 years, I joined the K11 Personal Training Program for my certification course. It is India’s best Fitness Academy. Later, I did my certification course for Sports Nutrition also.
My hunger is still not satisfied and I continue to acquire knowledge and now it’s time for me to share that knowledge.
How I can help you– Here I will be sharing all my knowledge, experience and mistakes that I made over the decade so that probably you can avoid making the same mistakes in your journey of fitness and make progress and improve yourself every day.
Remember I call it a journey because it’s not a one-time thing. It’s a never ending journey where you set your own goals and achieve them and then go on to set even bigger goals.
The more you go ahead the wider the horizon gets. It’s a journey to know your limits. It’s about how far you can go and maybe coming to the conclusion that there are no limits and there is more to you than you always believed.