A 62-year-old golfer says he is the fittest he’s been in 40 years after completing an incredible body transformation with Ultimate Performance.
Surinder, who works in finance, came to UP when he noticed he was getting out of breath finishing the final few holes on his Surrey golf course.
His initial aim was to simply regain his fitness for golf, but he went on to transform his whole physique in 12 months working with UP’s world-class personal trainers.
Despite a three-hour commute, Surinder was determined to commit himself 100% to his transformation goal, and you can see the result of his hard work.
His body fat dropped from around 24% to just 10.6%, and he built some serious lean muscle in his time training at UP.
Needless to say, it has improved his performance on the golf course – but it has also given him a new-found passion for strength training.
As he approaches his 63rd birthday, Surinder, who has now moved to the US, has his eyes firmly set on the goal of achieving a single-digit body fat percentage – something most guys half his age could only dream of.
“It’s the best I’ve ever felt since I left India – and that was 40 years ago,” says father-of-one Surinder.
“I still have a goal of getting to a sub-10% body fat, which my trainer keeps telling me at my age is probably impossible. But I want to kind of prove him wrong.”
How far Surinder has come in just a year is incredible.
He explains that he made the decision to come to UP and start training one day on the golf course when he noticed he was tiring before he had completed his 18 holes.
“I had really begun to lose strength and endurance. Because I’m a golfer and when I walked the course, after about 14 holes I was tired, and my game was going to hell in a hand basket in the last four or five holes.”
This was when he decided it was time to start regaining his strength and fitness.
“I was commuting about three hours a day, so I didn’t have a lot of time for maintaining my personal physique.
“So I felt when I started not enjoying the game, after the first 14 or 15 holes… I even called my wife and said ‘I think I’m going to go to a gym and start training.’
“The first thing she said was ‘Oh you’ve found a younger woman!’ And I said ‘no, it’s my golf game!’”
He came to UP with the goal of improving his endurance and his fitness for the golf course, but soon after working with his personal trainer, he set a much more ambitious target.
“When I met up with Harry, the first day we spent a lot of time talking about goals and what was I going to do. I think for me, I just wanted to get back playing better golf and get my strength back.
“The body fat wasn’t an issue. I’m generally a pretty healthy guy, so it wasn’t like I was obese and I needed to get down.
“As I got to working with my trainer for the first few months, I kind of got into it.”
He continues: “My body fat when he first calculated it was like 23 or 24%. It wasn’t bad at my age.
“I said ‘what’s a good target to achieve?’ And he said ‘it depends on what you want’.
“So, I just threw a number at him and said ‘how about if I got sub-10%?’ Because that’s what I was, when I was a kid. And he goes ‘okay, that’s a good target’.
“So, then when we got into the photoshoot, that’s when we got really serious about meeting the goal and, as he calls it, basically ‘ripping me’.”
Once Surinder had set this goal and committed himself to it, nothing was going to stop him achieving it – not even his lengthy commute and busy work life at a banking company.
He dialled in his diet, swapping high-carb foods like muffins and sandwiches for lean meats, oily fish, vegetables and plenty of healthy fats.
Surinder dedicated to training at least three times a week with his UP trainer – and followed a high-intensity German Body Composition protocol targeting his upper and lower body during the first phases of his training.
He might have just missed his target of getting a sub-10% body fat reading, but his incredible results speak for themselves.
Surinder attributes his success down to three factors – the first of which was his UP trainer’s dedication to keeping him on track towards his goal.
“He was the guy micromanaging me and keeping me disciplined. So ‘give me your daily intake. Tell me how long you sleep. How much water you drank. How many steps you took. What are you putting in your stomach?’
“So on the days I couldn’t send him my daily tracking, he would say ‘hey where’s your daily tracking?’
“So I would say, I would give him a lot of credit for keeping up with me and literally keeping me on track.”
Surinder says the second key factor behind his astonishing transformation was getting his mindset right – and he used a golfing analogy to explain it.
“I had to get my head into it. As a golfer, I would say ‘it’s 90% head and 10% execution.’
“So what I did was say ‘do I really want to do this?’ And I said to myself ‘yes I do’.
“They say it’s mind over matter, right? I put my mind to it, and he and I did it together.”
Thirdly, he says that it was then just all about having the discipline and commitment to get the job done.
“The 10% was just execution. So just being disciplined about showing up for a workout when I had to, eating when I had to and getting rest when I had to.
“My wife used to laugh at me when I was putting the food on the scales every night because I had to have 100g of grilled fish.
“My son and my wife always used to snicker and laugh about it.”
But staying focused and driven towards his goal got him to where he is now – fitter, stronger and healthier than he has been in decades.
“Believe it or not, my golf game has actually improved. I’m not even playing as much, but I’m hitting the ball a lot further; I’m much more balanced.
“So it has had an impact. I did it for golf, but I haven’t really focused on getting my golf game better.
“I’m kind of pivoting from golf to this maniacal obsession or passion for getting to a sub-10 body fat percentage.
“I keep telling my other trainer in the US, if I get to sub 10% by March 31, I’ll go in and get Harry to measure me just to prove him wrong!”
He adds: “If I’m travelling and I can’t workout at least three times a week, I start feeling bloated and not healthy – so I have to go and workout. It almost gives me a natural high when I’m working out.”
Surinder’s journey with UP has brought him so far and taught him so much about nutrition, fitness and getting in peak physical shape.
But it has also taught him a lot about himself, his true capabilities and the power of an iron will.
“The results are really a function of three things: mindset, diet and the coach.
“The trainer can only do certain things. So if you’re always eating bad things, not getting enough rest or not having the mindset, you won’t get the results.
“I think personally the mindset is the most important in my mind, then obviously the chemistry with the trainer. I think those two things really clicked with UP.”
One thing that Surinder did say was that anybody could achieve these results if they set their mind to it.
“I’m going to be 63 in less than a month and a half. So in my mind, if anyone is saying they can’t do it or it’s too difficult, I will call them all excuses.
“That is the mindset and the discipline of the thing. If you have the mindset, there is nothing in this world that cannot be accomplished.”
