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  • Fitness Kickboxing Regular Daniela Elias is SBG Buford’s Athlete of the Month for September

    Daniela Elias came to SBG Buford in the summer of 2018, wanting to make some substantial changes to her life. As a college student (Cyber Security), she was trying to balance her studies, her job, social life, and stay in good shape. She purchased a membership at LA Fitness, but it just wasn’t her thing. The atmosphere, the crowd, being left to “just figure it out”. She needed something else.

    She arrived at SBG because she “didn’t want to die while walking up the stairs.” 😂 Her LA Fitness membership was going unused and she wanted the guidance of a coach who could tell her what to do, and why she was doing it. She ditched her previous gym membership and became part of the SBG Tribe, attending our Fitness Kickboxing classes.

    One of her first coaches with Coach Jim Sheppard, who said this about Daniela:

    “Daniela didn’t take the soft approach; she was all in from the start. She’d attend classes regularly, sometimes even doing 2 classes per day. At some point, she also started doing Fitness Performance classes too and that’s when things really started happening for her, physically.”

    In our Fitness Performance classes, Daniella is now able to get in strength training to complement the endurance work and high-intensity training. She recently had some incredible breakthroughs in her physical strength, hitting new personal records on both the bench press and deadlift!

    Head Fitness Coach James Morton told us about Daniela’s recent accomplishments:

    “Last week we were testing some of our most important and compound lifts, and Daniela crushed it! She increased her 3 rep max on the bench press by 15 pounds, and later in the week, she deadlifted over 200 pounds for the first time ever. She previously couldn’t lift 200 pounds once, but last week she put up 205 pounds 3 times in a row!!”

    In a world where a lot of women are afraid to lift heavy weights, Daniela understands that she’s not going to get “bulky” by doing bench presses and deadlift. Between her good eating habits and fantastic attendance in class, she has added lean muscle tone to her body and stripped off some body fat without looking like a linebacker 😂.

    Great work Daniela! Keep up those amazing gains.

    Jim Sheppard

    is one of the co-owners of Straight Blast Gym Buford and Straight Blast Gym Atlanta. He has been training / coaching / competing in Muay Thai since 2013 and holds a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.