By Jim Servin
Brawny, tough, with a rock-solid, results-driven approach to fitness training, along with a sympathetic ear and excellent conversation skills, Ngo Okafor says that over 70 percent of his clientele are women. One reason for the female-leaning ratio may have to do with Okafor’s public praise from Brooke Shields, who in 2020 raved on Instagram about results from his Transformation series. “She talked about how working with me changed her life, and changed how she saw fitness,” says Okafor.
Now, the former two-time Golden Gloves boxing champ is fine-tuning his training protocol to enhance benefits for his female clients: “My mission is to optimize every woman’s health, fitness and strength at any age and every stage of life,” he says. “In addition to making women fit and strong—physically and mentally—I focus on mom empowerment, confidence coaching and helping women reclaim their lives.”
Okafor’s own transformation story inspires. Born in Framingham, Massachusetts, and raised in Nigeria, he suffered through serious bouts with asthma, pneumonia and respiratory issues when he was a child. As a teen, his ailments healed, giving him a new lease on life and ambition to become fantastically fit. He moved to America, where he worked in IT as well as modeling: “I was Blabio, the Black Fabio, for a publishing company which put me on their romance book covers.” Okafor decided to learn how to box at the advanced age of 31, and became a Golden Gloves boxing champion, twice. Now he is driven to help other underdogs turn their lives around. “Client after client, talking with them, it’s like clockwork,” he says. “Once women get into their later years, they start feeling they don’t matter, that they’re not sexy. Nobody should ever feel that way. I start with a client by telling them to stop reading articles that say you can’t build muscle after a certain age. I’m 49 and still building muscle. If I can do it, you can do it. And I have the program that will get it done.”
Offered at his Iconoclast Fitness facility in the Flatiron district, Okafor’s revolutionary Transformation program (also available on Zoom, FaceTime or WhatsApp video) has a modality specifically tailored for women. “We do five sessions a week—three days for lower body, two for upper body,” he says. “Men’s and women’s needs are different. Women don’t want to have as much upper body muscle; they want more definition, and doing a lot of lower body work burns a lot more calories than upper body work.”
A key ingredient to Okafor’s success is simply listening to clients. “I check in: ‘How are you feeling? How was your day? Did you sleep?’ Human beings want to work hard, and to be held accountable,” says the father of two. “They also want someone who has compassion for what they’re going through and what they’re feeling. I start everyone where they are, then build them up and ramp them up.”
For Purist readers, Okafor delivers a summer fitness pep talk: “Consistency is key. Just keep moving. If you say you’re going to do abs every day, do 10 situps every day. If you’re going to do 10 squats, do 10 squats every day. If you can do 10,000 steps a day, you’ll be in a great place.” The rate for the impactful Transformation program is $7,000, or $4,000 when working with one of his Iconoclast trainers. “It’s cheaper than buying a bag,” Okafor says. “An Hermès bag will buy you 10 Transformations.”
iconoclastfitness.com; @catchngo on Instagram