This archive report was first published on 14 September 2019.
At 44, Sherif Mikhail, a glass contractor from Culver City, California, was struggling to stay active after a car accident left him injured. He had gained weight, feeling listless and tired, and was eating poorly as an emotional outlet.
However, with the help of a six-week transformation program with Ultimate Performance fitness, Mikhail began to turn his life around. He was paired with a personal trainer, Eric Bowling, who worked around his existing injuries and helped him avoid new ones.
‘Being a client shouldn’t feel like a number,’ Mikhail says. ‘It needs to feel personal. It’s in the title: ‘personal trainer.’ Lots of trainers forget that.’
With his trainer, Mikhail focused on upper-body workouts, doing sets of bench presses, chin ups, and ab crunches. He also made significant changes to his diet, logging everything he ate and drank, and prepping his meals to be high in protein and veggies.
Over six to eight months, Mikhail dropped 20 pounds of fat and packed on muscle. ‘The feeling is priceless,’ he says. ‘It’s great waking up in the morning looking at yourself with a new look and body.’
Today, Mikhail is lean and strong, and he credits his trainer and his own dedication for his success. ‘I’m constantly looking to improve,’ he says. ‘Pushing myself on a day to day basis. Every year that passes I celebrate my birthday knowing each year I age I look better than the year before.’
Published on September 14, 2019, by Jesse Hicks, a Detroit-based writer and former features editor at The Verge.
