Dr. Kareem Samhouri
Q: I’m here with Dr. Kareem Samhouri, creator of the Double Edged Fat Loss program. Thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me, Kareem. For the benefit of our readers, tell us a little bit about yourself and your areas of expertise.
A: Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me. Sure, I’d love to tell you a little bit more about myself and the kinds of people I can really help. First of all, I’m a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Kinesiologist, Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, & Health & Fitness Specialist. Boy, that’s a mouthful… now, let me tell you what I really do. I’m a Metabolic Fat Loss & Fitness Expert.
I specialize in helping people get in the best shape of their lives, and I this through improving communication between their bodies & their central nervous system first. By strengthening your body in a specific way, while communicating properly with your nervous system, your muscles learn to contract more easily. Once you’re able to gain more control over your body, fat loss is simple.
Q: You have diverse areas of expertise, how do these help you become a better trainer and fat loss instructor?
A: Great question! Well, basically, this comes down to mastery of human movement & knowledge of proper joint position, mechanics, and optimal strengthening positions. You see, as a physical therapist, it is my job to understand how to perfectly align the body and create the ideal healing environment. As a fitness professional, it’s my job to build the most effective exercise program surrounding goals like weight loss, fat loss, muscle building, etc. In this case, when you integrate both, your body naturally starts to melt, your belly fat steadily dissappears, and your joints improve strength.
I never fully understood the importance of the integration of physical therapy & personal training until I was overweight. Not all that many people know this, but I used to weigh an additional 32 pounds and have an extra 17% bodyfat on me. I really didn’t feel like myself. The thing was… my joints weren’t aligned very well, so all of my weight loss efforts either led to plateau or pain. I couldn’t seem to break the cycle, even though I was a fitness pro. Finally, I integrated both fields, got all kinds of help from the world-renowned faculty at the University of Miami, and voila! My joints healed, my body started reshaping, and my pain went away completely. I was mal-aligned and creating ‘signaling blocks’ in my nervous system that were stopping me from getting good muscle contractions.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about how you created Double Edged Fat Loss?
A: Sure! Double Edged Fat Loss is a product of all the knowledge, all of the exercises, and all of the tips/tricks I’ve seen work over the last 11 years of working as a fitness professional to produce the fastest possible fat loss results. I decided it was time to take a step back and serve the market in order to advance the field. I wanted to make all of my knowledge concrete, and available to everyone as a one-time investment (rather than making people feel powerless, like they will absolutely have to pay for a personal trainer for life if they don’t want to be fat.)
More importantly, I wanted to educate. Double Edged Fat Loss came to be because my clients who received an education in fitness & fat loss became healthy for life. Double Edged Fat Loss came to be because my clients who received an education in their bodies influenced their families. Double Edged Fat Loss came to be because I noticed real, and lasting change, and I wanted to spread the message.
Q: Your program is nearly all video. I also saw that you recently appeared on TV. How do you feel being in front of the camera with all the huge exposure you’ve been getting lately?
A: To be honest, I love it!
I’ve always wanted to spread what’s good in my life to others. Having an opportunity to appear on camera really just saves me from repeating myself. The more you get to know me, Yonatan, the more you’ll realize how passionate I am about this stuff. I truly want to help people change their lives & regain self-control. I want to help people feel great, and video is a way to do this for anyone around the world. I’m just humbled to be in a position to do so…
Q: What are the principles of your program?
A: Squat, Push, Lunge, Pull, Plank
That’s it… well, and about 9,000 other tricks that I throw in there as the ‘medicine in the peanut-butter’, so to speak. For example, these are the 5 basic movements, but every workout has 20 sets. All 20 sets are different exercises, and no exercise is ever repeated in the 8 workouts that come with DEFL. That’s key – variety is king. You have to add variety to your program to guarantee yourself the best results possible. That’s why I created an enormous exercise video database that has over 585 exercise videos (and growing)… so that people can mix it up long after they finish with the 30 day meltdown period of DEFL.
You see, you have to add 3D movement to every workout, meaning you have to move forward/backward, side to side, & with rotation. You should balance muscles, always working equal and opposites, and you should work on communication strategies to your nervous system to make this more possible. Building coordination with movement and enhancing ‘movement skill,’ so to speak, is more important than I can say.
Teaching your body to see each exercise as a new challenge, and then overcoming that challenge has benefit both psychologically & physically. Most importantly, it allows you to get faster and faster results as time goes on.
This is about rediscovering your exercise potential.
For the 2nd part of this interview, visit Dr. Kareem Samhouri part 2
