Dheepesh Bhatt, popularly known as Shivoham, is a celebrity fitness trainer who trains some of India’s biggest celebrities, athletes and thousands of fitness enthusiasts around the world. He is also the founder of ‘Transform with Shiv’ 21-day challenge that went viral during Covid lockdown, and focuses on CrossFit training, reflecting the best aspects of gymnastics, weights, running and rowing, as well as cardio, core, and freehand workouts.
Shivoham is the person behind Aamir Khan’s body transformations for Dhoom 3, Talaash, Laal Singh Chaddha which is in its final stages of shooting. He has trained celebs like Ranveer Singh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Parineeti Chopra, Arjun Kapoor and is currently with Ranbir Kapoor.
He has also written a book ‘The ShivFit Way’ which is a user manual for all the fitness routines Shivoham recommends. His motto behind writing the book is to help people live a healthy life with a balance of mental fitness as well.
A born sportsperson, Shivoham was always inclined towards fitness. From being a national-level swimmer in school, he continued with his fitness endeavours throughout college. But like any successful story he too drifted from his path and moved to Melbourne to pursue his career in animation. He continued it for a year but soon realised that this wasn’t something he really wanted to do. He did odd jobs like sales, cleaning dishes and floors, telemarketing until he finally became a sales representative for a gym called Fitness First.
The very next year Shivoham was asked to look after the gym’s Indian Franchise. The two main aspects of the job were sales and personal training. He already had experience in sales, so he expressed his desire to gain in depth knowledge about personal training and was coached for personal training by the gym.
He says “The day I took on my first client I knew that this is it. This is what I would be doing for the rest of my life. It’s not going to be sales, it’s not going to be looking after a gym or managing a gym. It’s going to be coaching and that of course evolved more from just a basic fitness trainer who taught CrossFit to today being a coach and guiding people about what fitness really means.”
Everybody has to go through certain struggles in life and has to figure out a solution & a way to overcome them. When Shivoham came back to India, he decided to start a gym of his own. He spoke to a friend who agreed to give him a place to open the gym. Soon, Shivoham sold off everything he had in Melbourne to settle in India. But then suddenly his friend backed out from giving him the place due to a property dispute with his partner.
Shivoham was in a fix. He started low-key and conducted training in bandstand, in his friend’s building, in his own building and in Khar Gymkhana until then he finally found a space for his own gym. But his hurdles didn’t end there. Just two days before the gym’s inauguration, BMC shut the place down because it was an underground parking spot.
He says “At that point I was thinking that I was probably better off in Melbourne. Everything over there was sorted & settled and I was doing pretty good. Why did I come back”
He didn’t let all this deter his spirit and continued working hard till he finally got the same place that was offered to him initially by his friend. That marked the launch of first CrossFit gym in India and went on for next 10 years.
Being the first CrossFit coach in India and the founder of the first CrossFit box in India by itself was a pretty big achievement for Shivoham. CrossFit was not very known at that time. So people were not really aware of what CrossFit is all about but slowly and steadily people started loving it.
Everything went on and people definitely saw what he was doing, the way he was conducting his classes and his passion behind it. The genuine person behind it and the real information plus training that was provided was the major reason that made people recognise him. Training a lot of Bollywood celebrities also gave a big push to the brand name ‘Shivoham’.
He says “Training some of the biggest Bollywood celebrities has been a privilege. It’s an absolute honour and pleasure training them. They treat us like family and their curious nature to ask about different things makes us realise how upto date are we with our knowledge. Celebrities are very different kind of people. They know exactly why they have hired you. They know the kind of work that needs to go into the training. They are super focused, committed to their work committed to their training and committed to showing results.”
Shivoham believes what sets his brand apart is the mind aspect, which is something that his wife Vrinda has got to this program. He adds “It is what the world needs today. There are a lot of gyms now and a lot of different coaches also who are realising what the mind aspect means and are educating their clients about. He believes the coaches need to practice what they preach. Only then they can teach other people how to control their mind.”