Archive

Though he has provided personal fitness training and advice to business people and film personalities alike, including Aamir Khan most recently, Kaizzad Capadia urges the students and alumni of his fitness academy not to hanker after being celebrity trainers, as seems to be the trend currently. "I urge them to be celebrities in their own right,” states Capadia who seems to be fanatical about fitness and about birthing, growing and nurturing a population of fitness trainers.
Capadia is the founder and director at K11 Fitness Academy (K11), a corporate body that operates from four locations in India — Bombay, Delhi, Poona and Indore. K11 focuses on two basic areas — education for fitness trainers and setting up of gyms for third parties. Education of fitness trainers is closest to the 43-year-old director. The Academy offers six courses in fitness training. Capadia believes the USP (unique selling proposition) of his Academy is the focus its courses have on practical aspects of fitness training with equal amount of time devoted to practical training and scientific theory at their fully equipped gym floors. K11 is internationally accredited by Pearson Assured, which conducts regular audits and guarantees the quality of K11’s training programs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each practical session on the gym floor, he says, is personalized, with sessions having no more than four trainees at a time. The eight-month Master Trainers’ course is personally conducted by Capadia. In his office adjoining the Bombay outlet he proudly shows the manuals developed by him, with some professional help for the theoretic aspects of human musculoskeletal systems, exercise physiology and study of movements, among others. For certain courses conducted in Marathi and Hindi, there are manuals translated into these languages. K11 offers a 100% placement guarantee within the fitness industry to all successful candidates. He speaks fondly of his two Zoroastrian alumni, Shahzad Davar and Kaivan Panthaki and recalls how well placed they are. "My boys,” he calls them.
When "people started seeing me as a trainers’ trainer,” Capadia toyed with the idea of setting up his own academy. And started giving shape to what was to become the future K11. In mid-2002, he decided to partner with Devki Khimji who had the business acumen while he brought in the technical expertise. Before setting up the company, both Khimji and Capadia worked towards passing their Certified Fitness Professional exams conducted by the American Council of Exercise in which both stood first in their respective exams, he says proudly. The company was named K11 after Kaizzad, Khimji and their group of 11 core professionals then. The company now employs 250 professionals.
His wife, Kalyani, functions as the chief executive officer of K11. She joined him when he was setting up K11, and "apart from being extremely athletic and strong, soon showed her prowess in administrative systems and sales,” states Kaizzad. "I always had tremendous respect for physically and mentally strong women,” he says. 
Capadia states that probably his venture into the fitness world was inspired by his father Farrokh. "He was heavily into workouts and playing tennis and in using the Bullworker, a fitness device. His mother Sheroo, who passed away in 2006, wanted her son to "be the next Zubin Mehta,” he states, straight faced. He did appear for a few exams conducted by the Trinity College of Music, but soon realized that he had no deep seated interest in music. Sheroo then wrote to Russi Modi, the former chairman and managing Director of Tata Steel, requesting him to take on the young Capadia under the sports quota in their Jamshedpur plant. 
So 21-year-old Kaizzad, who by then had already won the titles of Junior Mr Bombay and Junior Mr Maharashtra in 1989 for body building was packed off to the steel city. The Bombay boy being unhappy with the climate and food in this Bihar town "left after only six months in Jamshedpur, on my Bullet,” he states. This feisty young man hopped on his bike and rode back to Bombay, when his request for a transfer to Bombay was not acceded to. He recalls that his contemporaries at the Tata Steel Sports Center included Shiny Abraham and Mercy Kuttan, the track and field queens. His love of bikes endures, he states, while proudly showcasing his shiny yellow BMW GS which stands right outside the entrance to the Bombay center of K11 in Santa Cruz.     
"Even when I was a kid I was always testing my strength. I would always want to pick up the largest stone or arm wrestle with the biggest kid in class,” he states. He feels that perhaps he was over-compensating for his diminutive 5’4’’ structure. "I dreamt of being Mr Universe,” muses Capadia recalling, "I was a very average student.” He studied at Singhania School in Thana, where the family lived then, and subsequently went to St Xaviers and Ruia Colleges. His sister, Farrida, settled in Canada, is a part-time real estate manager. His first entry to a gym was at age 15 to meet a friend. Within three months he was hooked, he claims. "I was working out four hours a day, almost daily,” he recalls, but states that this was not good, as there was no supervision.
After his friend Devendra Devgan introduced him to body building magazines, he was enthused to move from body building as an indulgence to the science behind it, happily sharing his knowledge with his friends.
A turning point in Capadia’s life came in 1992 as a result of a meeting with Madhukar Talwalkar, owner of Talwalkar’s, India’s biggest chain of gyms, that motivated him to pursue the then nascent trend of personal training as a career opportunity. "I made my bread and butter from personal training only,” he states, "unlike others who were in the profession part time.”  Capadia reels off names of several illustrious business families of Bombay, including the Bajajs and the Ruias, who hired his services as a personal trainer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next milestone in his life occurred in 1999, he says, "when Anu and Haroun Yusuf, a business couple in Bombay, invited me to set up a 2,500 sq ft gym for them as a business venture,” which he did, all the while feeling like a "kid in a candy store, as I was given a free hand in its set-up.” The sea-facing gym in Bombay’s Worli area, named Exert, was a forerunner of its time with 47 ‘stations’ with the latest equipment, an aerobics studio and a health food outlet. "A good gym has to allow for evolution from the beginner, to intermediate to advanced, all at the same place,” he says.  Capadia stresses that a good fitness regimen, irrespective of age, must result in improvement of five elements: cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, musculoskeletal strength, flexibility and ideal body composition. Meanwhile, Capadia was also lecturing at another academy, started by fitness educationist Leena Mogre, who he believes is the pioneer in this field.
Technology savvy Capadia enthusiastically reveals the proposed plans for K11: opening up a new gym in Juhu soon to serve as a show place for K11, as also setting up centers in Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Calcutta, Madras and Bangalore. There will be no classrooms in these new centers but only gym floors, in keeping with the importance of practical implementation of scientific principles of training. "All theoretical lessons will be beamed to these centers from Bombay via a live feed, not a recording,” he emphasizes. Examination and certification will continue as usual for these centers. 
On a personal level, Capadia wants to restart intensive training for himself later this year after some corrective surgery for injuries suffered in the past, and go on to compete in and win more titles in body building. "I won the Mr Bombay title in 2005 and 2010 last, and the finals at the state level in 2008,” he recalls.
Unlike his religiously inclined father, Kaizzad says he is personally averse to rituals but wears the sudreh and kusti when visiting fire temples. While the concept of good thoughts, good words and good deeds finds a resonance with him, he believes that it is not correct to treat Zoroastrian women married outside the faith as outsiders. Smilingly, he says, "I did not go out of my way to marry outside the community. It just happened that Kalyani was the first woman I fell in love with.”
This fitness expert says that Parsis in general have "a pretty good genetic pool,” but we are seeing "less and less fit people these days.” He wants "to make fitness the norm in all.”