AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Scroll through so­cial me­dia to­day, and you may be bom­bard­ed by ag­gres­sive fit­ness con­tent cre­ators with their gru­elling, com­plex di­ets and work­out rou­tines. But fit­ness in­struc­tor Sha­reef Ali is dif­fer­ent, in­spir­ing all gen­er­a­tions to un­lock their mo­bil­i­ty, one stretch at a time.

Sha­reef’s Tik­Tok page is easy to find. Sim­ply search for the “flip­py boi”, of­ten do­ing ex­u­ber­ant flips, bet­ter known as trick­ing (a dis­ci­pline that com­bines flips, twists and kicks), since the age of 15.

“I start­ed do­ing flips, which I taught my­self in the back­yard, right here. I al­ways loved char­ac­ters like Liu Kang, Bruce Lee or Jack­ie Chan, these char­ac­ters that were very dy­nam­ic in their move­ment. And they used to jump off things and do flips and fight. I was al­ways hooked on that,” the 24-year-old fit­ness in­struc­tor told Guardian Me­dia.

Sim­ply by watch­ing YouTube videos, he taught him­self var­i­ous types of flips. Though it came with a few falls and some screams of agony, he fell more in love with trick­ing. Nat­u­ral­ly, it drew many in awe of his move­ments, es­pe­cial­ly when he be­gan post­ing videos on­line.

As an avid lover of a wide va­ri­ety of sports, ath­leti­cism or­gan­i­cal­ly be­came a lifestyle. This jour­ney even­tu­al­ly re­sult­ed in Sha­reef wel­com­ing com­pet­i­tive body­build­ing as his next un­ex­pect­ed chap­ter.

“I start­ed work­ing in a gym in 2023. I re­mem­ber one day, specif­i­cal­ly, I took off my jer­sey, and every­body was so shocked and sur­prised. They’re like, ‘That’s what you just look like? Where’d that come from?’ And they start­ed push­ing me to re­al­ly like to pur­sue body­build­ing … we de­cid­ed to do a show. And the show was in two weeks, so I had two weeks to prep and step on stage. It went great. I end­ed up win­ning that show!”

But even with this suc­cess, his grow­ing au­di­ence seemed more in­trigued by his trick­ing skills, some­thing he loved just as much. Recog­nis­ing that not every­one can flip through the air, Sha­reef de­cid­ed to piv­ot his con­tent to be more in­clu­sive, shift­ing his fo­cus to­wards func­tion­al fit­ness.

“The kind of move­ment that I’m do­ing, which is very dy­nam­ic, very dan­ger­ous, flip­ping and jump­ing all over the place or sprint­ing and run­ning re­al­ly fast, the chances of in­jury is very high. So I re­alised the av­er­age per­son isn’t go­ing to want to do that. But I know from my ex­pe­ri­ence that be­ing ca­pa­ble enough to do those things is free­dom. That free­dom of know­ing that your body can han­dle what­ev­er you throw at it,” he said.

Through the com­ments on his videos, Sha­reef was in­spired to make move­ment ac­ces­si­ble to every­one, help­ing peo­ple avoid in­jury from sud­den falls or un­ex­pect­ed strains.

“It is not just lift­ing weights or go­ing to the gym and hop­ping on a ma­chine. While I do think these things are im­por­tant, be­ing able to move and have no lim­its on your move­ment, be­ing able to reach down to the floor, or to reach up and grab some­thing, you know. These are re­al things that peo­ple my age, even younger, can’t even do any­more,” Sha­reef ex­plained.

“Be­cause we just live our life of seden­tary be­hav­iour. Sit­ting down and not re­al­ly mov­ing much. So that was al­ways my goal. Get peo­ple to un­der­stand why these things mat­ter, and teach it in a way that any­one could un­der­stand.”

With the knowl­edge gained from a BSc in Sport Ki­net­ics and his per­son­al train­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, Sha­reef be­gan giv­ing his on­line au­di­ence ex­act­ly what they want­ed: tu­to­ri­als on mo­bil­i­ty drills, stretch­ing and re­sis­tance rou­tines to en­sure a full range of mo­tion.

Sha­reef point­ed to the fact that as peo­ple age, par­tic­u­lar­ly past 40, they nat­u­ral­ly lose joint mo­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty.

“Your joints and your mus­cles are not as flex­i­ble as they used to be, right. And I have a lot of clients now in their 60s, 70s, even some in the 80s who are re­al­ly feel­ing the ef­fects of that now. If they even just raise their arm a cer­tain way, they’re feel­ing pain, or they have like se­ri­ous lack of mo­bil­i­ty in places where it mat­ters.”

When he show­cas­es his tu­to­ri­als, his au­di­ence es­pe­cial­ly en­joys clips fea­tur­ing his star client and moth­er, Sha­lae­ma Ali, who has be­come an in­spi­ra­tion to many of Sha­reef’s fol­low­ers.

“Sha­reef is my in­spi­ra­tion. I have to say, I nev­er liked ex­er­cise. I nev­er thought I would be one to be try­ing to en­cour­age my friends, you know, ‘do your ex­er­cise’,” his moth­er said.

“Be­ing over 50 and start­ing ex­er­cis­ing, I mean, if some­body had told me ex­er­cise would help, you know, with the age­ing process, I would not have be­lieved them.”

While she be­lieves hav­ing the abil­i­ty to do a back­flip is long past her, Sha­reef has got­ten her to mas­ter es­sen­tial func­tion­al move­ments. He stress­es that the en­tire body needs to be trained equal­ly, coun­ter­ing the mis­con­cep­tion that men should on­ly fo­cus on the up­per body and women on the low­er body.

But Sha­reef be­lieves there is one move­ment that is the most fun­da­men­tal of them all—the squat.

“But not every­body could do a full squat. So it has ways, it has lev­el steps, you know. The high­est lev­el would be a com­plete deep squat, where you could rest in it. But at the small­est lev­el is just sit­ting on a chair and get­ting back up.”

Whether train­ing clients on­line or in per­son, Sha­reef en­sures he pro­vides prac­ti­cal ex­er­cis­es to aid them in their dai­ly lives for years to come. He un­der­stands that every­one is dif­fer­ent, and while fit­ness and nu­tri­tion goals are im­por­tant, life is meant to be lived to the fullest.

“Every­body is dif­fer­ent, and every­body is go­ing to have their own jour­ney when it comes to fit­ness. You would know what works for you, what doesn’t work, what gives you the best chance of meet­ing your goals. And you just stick with that.”