-First of all tell us about the establishment of Oxygen gym
In the beginning we wanted a strategy to build a one of a kind gym in the Arabic gulf, one which includes high quality equipments since the sport gyms in Kuwait lacked the experience in choosing the right equipments. I too didn’t have the experience needed in this area either. But after visiting the best known gyms in the United States and following up on professionals training videos I noticed that 90% of the basic sport equipments are alike. Also the opening of the first gym in Adiliya and the visits of professional to Kuwait helped me become more experienced in sport equipments and body building.
And I liked the idea so we increased the number of equipments and we opened more branches of the gym across the region, and that’s because the sport of bodybuilding spread widely also to achieve our goal of spreading the knowledge and the awareness of building muscles, burning fat, and strengthening the body. So we wanted the people of Kuwait to be aware that the Oxygen gym is the way to achieve sports goals.
-And what is the story of your experience in preparing the athletes and helping them to reach the highest positions?
At first Kuwait bodybuilders were made fun of by bodybuilders from other countries at the Qatar contest, and the Arabic bodybuilders didn't know anything about Kuwait bodybuilders.
I also wasn't accepted by Kuwaiti champions, they used to say "who is this guy with a 6 months experience trying to prepare players for championships” and that was also because there were long experienced people in this area, so they thought I was an inexperienced sellout who only wants to promote Oxygen gym.
So I started training players with the Filipino citizenship, and we achieved the first and second places in 2 different weights in a contest in Kuwait.
And with that people started approaching the game. And I thought to myself that it's hard to convince the older generation with the game, so I wanted to bring out a new generation into the game and that wasn't easy to do. And we started spreading more and entering challenging contests. And we achieved high positions and with that the older generation began to understand that there really is someone with experience in this game whose been scoring high and fast achievements in preparing bodybuilders.
a few years after that we thought about establishing a Kuwaiti bodybuilding national team , where the players were selected by 4 professional judges which has never been done in any other national team before.
and after that the achievements began rising, as in just two years we took golden, silver and bronze medals in more than one Internationally certified championship, such as Arnold Classic and Asia. When comparing these accomplishments over a 2years period from developing the game in Kuwait with other countries you'll notice the enormous success.
and the number of bodybuilders winning medals in Kuwait are more than 8 players, where as you'll only find 2 or 3 players from different countries even though there was never a national bodybuilding team in Kuwait achieving anything, and also that all of this was done without a bodybuilding federation, unlike other countries.
And I’d also like to add that the only country that has Egyptian trainers competing with the Egyptian team is Kuwait.
They’ve started with low weights and average levels till they reached higher weights and stronger levels such as
-Mohammed Salama
-Jamal Al Modawy
-and Rami al Sabie
And Egypt has at least 25 years of experience in body building, as for Kuwait it started this game only 5 years ago.
-Tell us about professionals visit to Kuwait
My journey with the pros started with the champion Ronnie Coleman, he was very impressed by the size of the gym and the quality of the equipments in it, after that Dennis James visited me and he also liked the level at which this game reached here, he stayed in Kuwait for over 6 months and he got used to its people and it became a habit that one of the top 5 in mister Olympia visits Kuwait and every year we gain knowledge and experience from them and hear what they have to say about the Oxygen gyms. And till now the entire professionals were impressed by the Oxygen gyms chain and some of them even got used to camp in Kuwait to participate in Mr Olympia Championship. Some of the professional who have visited Kuwait are:
- Dennis Wolf
- Haitada Yamagiche
- Branch Warren
- Johnny Jackson
- Phil Heath
- Kai Green
- Tony Freeman
- And Melvin Anthony
And many more hopefully will be visiting
Arabianmuscles.com would like to thank Ahmed Qahtan for making and sharing this interview.
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