INTERVIEWEE | Coach Akram ElSobky S & C Personal Trainer for Al Ahly Basketball’s First Team

Journalist: Nada Salem

From a basketball player to a personal trainer for Al Ahly Basketball’s first team and many achievements in between, we had this interview with Coach Akram or “Coach K”.

Coach Akram ElSobky is the personal trainer for strength and conditioning for Al Ahly Basketball’s First Team and is one of the most inspiring influencers in the wellness and fitness industry. He is an Ex-professional basketball player who is now a certified personal trainer and athletic nutritionist. He has founded his own fitness center in Alexandria called “The Tribe” and is the founder of K apparel, a sportswear Egyptian brand.

Influencers Today: Tell us about your journey, when and how did you start playing basketball?

Akram ElSobky: I started playing basketball at the age of 11. However, before that, I used to play swimming, tennis as a professional player, and water polo till I started playing basketball when I was 11 years old which is a bit late compared to basketball players.
Luckily I proceeded with basketball and stopped playing other sports.
When I was 16 years old I was promoted to the Basketball First Team at
Alexandria Sporting Club. At the age of 20, I signed my first contract.
At 22, directly after I graduated, I travelled to England and played
professionally there for one year where I started to study nutrition and
fitness there and got my certifications in those fields. Then I returned
back to Egypt and played for 3 years at Alexandria Sporting Club (ASC)
during which we won the Egyptian Basketball Super League and Egypt
Basketball Cup. Then I switched my career to being a personal trainer
and strength and conditioning specialist for Basketball’s First Team at
Alexandria Sporting Club for 4 years. Besides, I was the personal trainer
for most of the professional world Squash champions currently on the scene.
Currently, I’m the personal trainer for strength and conditioning for Al Ahly Basketball First Team. Recently, we won the Egyptian Basketball linked League after winning all 18 matches. I graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, Communications major at the AAST in 2011 where
I was a professional basketball player at that time.

Influencers Today: Besides your career as a personal trainer & nutritionist, you’re managing your own fitness center, and you’ve founded a sportswear brand. In addition, you’re married and a father of a cute little boy. How do you manage to have multiple roles at the same time? Give us some tips on how to do more than one thing at a time.

Akram ElSobky: The answer to this question is the same reason why I chose the name of my gym “The Tribe”. Since I’ve always belonged to teamwork as a basketball player, I believe so much in the word “Tribe” in every
aspect of my life because no one can succeed just on his own and it’s a wrong concept to believe that you can do everything alone. There always should be people to help and support in all fields. Regarding my gym, I don’t manage it on my own, but I have my partner & friend “Maysara El Nagar” a world champion in Judo who is the one responsible primarily for the management. While at home, my wife, who is a former swimming world champion, is taking the whole responsibility at home, she is a multi-task person whom I can strongly rely on and trust while I’m travelling or away. This is the first point. The second point, which I learned from my father who used to join the
army is “Planning”. He used to wake up early, hold a pen and a piece of paper, and write down his plan for the day, throughout the week, and throughout the month. This documentation is the key that makes everything easier. If you don’t plan, you will achieve nothing in your life. In a nutshell, to list the keywords for success, number one is “The tribe”, to be surrounded by successful people who support
and help then accordingly you will succeed. Number two is “Planning” to avoid being random.

Influencers Today: In your opinion, as an influencer and a lot of young men and young ladies as well are learning from you, to what extent do you think social media has contributed to your journey and career?

Akram ElSobky: In my opinion, Social Media is a double-edged sword. If your target and true intention are to be helpful to your audience
and provide them with value, your content will unintendedly have an impact, you’ll gain a strong engagement, the audience will relate to your
profile, and eventually, the number of your followers will increase. However, if your main aim is to just go viral, increase followers, be famous, and that’s it, then your content might not be of value and will
just be showing off. So, it’s important to keep your profile helpful to your audience. Otherwise, people will just watch meaningless content and keep scrolling. This is what makes profiles more valuable than other profiles. In my opinion, the trick is to create content based on an
objective through a campaign. This will always be more helpful to your audience rather than just sharing a fact or a piece of advice in a single
post. This is what I’m already doing on my profile, I created campaigns like “30 days Ramadan tips”, “30 days fat loss”, “30 days muscle gain”
and so on. So, it’s important to create content that achieves your main purpose and goal from being on social media.

Influencers Today: If you will correct a common misconception related to losing weight or fats, what will it be?

Akram ElSobky:In my opinion, Social Media is a double-edged sword. If your target and true intention are to be helpful to your audience and provide them with value, your content will unintendedly have an impact, you’ll gain a strong engagement, the audience will relate to your profile, and eventually, the number of your followers will increase. However, if your main aim is to just go viral, increase followers, be famous, and that’s it, then your content might not be of value and will just be showing off.There are a lot of misconceptions in the fitness industry. Unfortunately, not everything shared on social media is correct and not everything shared is scientifically proven since a lot of reviews are just personal experiences and the result varies from one person to another. So, it’s not necessarily that my own experience works with X, Y, or Z. That’s why there is a difference between scientific facts and trial and error. Unfortunately, social media is full of trials and errors and it’s hard for the audience to differentiate between both of them which ends up with the audience blindly following an account with no guarantee of the results. Among the misconceptions that always pop up into my mind every day when I check my Instagram is “Cardio exercise to lose weight”; most people when they decide to lose weight, they take the action to go to the gym and exercise some cardio like spending 30 minutes on the treadmill then 45 minutes on the bike and so on. This may let you lose weight at the beginning but actually, you will end up stuck with 2 things; first; you will feel pain in your knees, back, ankle, and all over your body and the reason is that you didn’t work on strengthening your muscles. Second, which is very important; you may lose up to 5 kgs and then you will no more lose weight because your muscle percentage is weak and that’s because there’s a scientific fact that says “the percentage of metabolism depends on your muscle percentage in your body”. Scientifically, muscle mass or strength training burns calories more than Cardio does, so, lifting heavy weights lets you exert too much effort and energy that allows you to burn fats. In Fact, everyone should keep in mind that “the process of fat loss is a marathon and not a sprint” which means that in order to lose fat, imagine it like running in a marathon for 5 years and not running a 100-meter sprint in 2 minutes. So, the question that you should ask yourself is “how am I going to be in 10 years, 15 years, and 25 years?” and not “how am I going to be in 3 months?”. So, it’s all about sustainability.

Influencers Today: Tell us a motivational quote that has always inspired you and you’ve always had faith in.

Akram ElSobky: The quote that I believe in the most and I always had faith in is “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”. Personally, I don’t believe in talent as much as I believe in hard work because hard work can complement any lack of talent. As a basketball player, I never considered myself as talented, however, I used to train a lot and this allowed me to become a professional player. On the other side, regarding my work, I like to read and study a lot which enabled me to become a professional trainer. If you rely only on your talent, you’ll find out that hard workers will always exceed. Unfortunately, in Egypt, a lot of people have this mindset and rely only on their talents. However, if they add some hard work to this talent they will achieve a lot. This is the difference in mindsets between Egyptian players and foreign ones;
a lot of players here might have reached beyond their achievements in real life if they work hard beside their talents. This is the case with Mohamed Salah for instance; he is both talented and a hard worker. My family represents a true inspiration to me. My sister is a very successful doctor working in Cairo and she is a true hard worker who used to keep studying all the time. My brother, whom I consider a genius, is the lighting designer and Project Manager of Burj Khalifa and is among the 40 top designers around the world. My father is the lighting designer of the Prophet’s mosque campus. All of this made me always want to look up to be like them, how they work, how much they are committed to working ethics, and how diligent they are.

InfluencersToday: Tell us more about your childhood & your family. What kind of a child were you? Were you hyperactive? troublemaker? nerd? a calm and obedient kind of a kid?

Akram ElSobky:When I was a kid I was too quiet, then, at preparatory school, I started to be kind of naughty, at that stage I used to just play sports, go to school, and study. I was too clever at school till grade 12 when I switched to the American division. Then I started studying communication at the faculty of engineering, which is considered the most complicated department, and thank God I graduated in the same year as my colleagues without any gaps despite not attending at all because of the frequent traveling, championships, and camps.

InfluencersToday: A lot of adults might be caught or directed to take some kinds of drugs, steroids, or misuse of proteins, vitamins, and all of these kinds of bad habits. How can you –as a wellness influencer now- have a social responsibility regarding the awareness of how harmful  these habits are?  

Akram ElSobky:Since one’s health and wellness are a marathon on the long run and not a sprint on the short run, so, it’s very important to decide how you wish your body’s health to be like in the long run.Regarding all of these kinds of supplements and the misuse of taking them, there’s no need to explain how harmful they are in the long run. Instead, I’ll just demonstrate my words by giving proof with a bodybuilding legend called “Ronnie Coleman” who is now sitting in wheelchair. Imagine how professional  the staff is working on his strength and nutrition and how accurate they are in the doses of steroids provided to him and in the end, he can’t walk now. This means that no one will ever guarantee to manage the correct intake and quality of steroids. To know his story, you can check a documentary about him on Netflix called “Ronnie Coleman: The King”. In the end, it’s your choice. You can either choose to be a bodybuilder for just a few years and then be sitting on a wheelchair like Ronnie Coleman or suffer from poverty because of drug abuse like Maradona for example, or be a drug-free athlete and enjoy your life to the fullest like Pelé.

InfluencersToday: If you’re asked to hold the responsibility of the Minister of Youth and Sports for one day, what’s the topic that you’ll focus on the most? what decision will you take?

Akram Elsobky:Sports education! Unfortunately, our sports knowledge here in Egypt is very poor. From the 1990s up till now in 2020, we’re still having the same knowledge with 90% of the trainers and clubs who are applying the same exact old methods. So, decision number one will be working on the education of trainers in order to acquaint young athletes with up-to-date knowledge and raise their awareness. Otherwise, young athletes will keep inheriting outdated and wrong habits.This is the main difference between our sports levels here in Egypt and in other countries where trainers are always updated throughout the year through seminars and lectures. In fact, in order to excel and progress, we should keep up with the development..

InfluencersToday: We want to get to know more about you, so we are going to ask you to pick one of 2 choices that match you the most:

A morning person

a night owl

Morning person for sure!

Coffee

tea

Coffee definitely

dogs

Cats 

dogs

Traveling alone 

 with a group

Alone 100%. Since I’m spending all of my life with a group, so, I definitely prefer traveling alone. I’ve been to almost all of Europe over 10 years and amongst all of my trips I’ve traveled with my very close friends only 1 or 2 times. Currently, I always travel with my wife and son for sure.

Chicken 

 beef

Both of them. I love all kinds of food anyways.

Summer 

 winter

Summer

influencersToday: Last but not least, tell us about your future goals on both personal and professional levels.

Akram ElSobky:On a personal level, I wish that I always keep educating myself. I don’t want to be settled at a certain point or say it’s enough learning. I think that being settled in all aspects of life is a wrong mindset. I want to always be a good listener and to always seek learning whether I have a deficiency in a particular aspect or not. I believe that everyone should live with the mindset of always improving regardless of the idea of making money because continuous improvement will eventually make money.On a career level, I’m seeking to expand my gym “The Tribe” with more than one branch. For sports in general, I’m looking forward to initiating a brand new idea for all sports teams in Egypt within the coming 4 or 5 years which will totally change the concept of sports in Egypt.

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