Sheikh
Green Fitness Studio, Brooklyn, NYC — 7/27/2023
Author’s note:
In August 2020, during the COVID pandemic, I met Christopher Martin Sheik Bomba at a friend's training session in a Brooklyn park. His expertise and passion inspired me to start one-on-one training with him. We've evolved from using rocks in the park to shiny dumbbells in packed gyms. He's not just a trainer; he's also a friend.
Where were you born? And where do you live now?
00;00;30;17
I was born in Brooklyn, New York. Brownsville to be exact at St Mary's Hospital on a Thursday morning, 7:17 and it was raining.
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
00;01;08;05
Do not put off what you can do today for tomorrow.
During those morning moments when you don't want to leave your bed, what drives you to get up?
00;01;45;13
You. Every one. We move around in this world thinking that we should be by ourselves and we all have issues. So it's the weight of people that keeps me going. The name “Sheikh” means king, chief, or leader in Arabic. So I am a King to my people. My driving force is people.
Looking back to your childhood, do you have a brief but fond, nostalgic memory?
00;02;13;26
I was in Morocco with my mother and father. In Africa, Casablanca. And as we were walking, my mother looked back at me, I was trailing behind by maybe three or four feet. She looked back at me, smiled, and said, “I love you, Christopher.” And that stuck. I remember stopping and time stopped. Time stopped. And in that moment we saw each other. Now my mother and I see each other all the time, well we did, God rest her soul. But in that moment we saw each other. The year was 1995.
What gets you into a state of flow?
00;03;30;28
Working out, training, boxing, or any form of physical activity that allows me to go into a flow state. It's almost as though I've been taken off this plane and put into a tesseract. And for those who don't know what a tesseract is, it’s a lot more than what Marvel says it is.
When you’re immersed in fitness, what runs through your mind?
00;13;21;27
The ocean. It's the only time I feel free. The only time I feel alive. The ocean. Feedom. Freedom.
Regret and rumination - do these play a role in your life? And if so, how do you navigate through them?
00;06;18;13
Yes, I tend to look back a lot at times, especially at night. But how do I navigate through it? I remind myself that the mission is not done, the mission is not over. The mission is life. The mission in life for me is myself, my kids, and I navigate it with the understanding that no matter what I fear, no matter what is present that might be holding me back - it’s not going to change. But I can change how I move. I can change my perspective and I can change how I carry the weight.
So I navigate through those things by telling myself, “Hey, this is just a weight that I carry, let’s go.”
Are you proud of yourself?
00;07;21;22
No. I stammered with a smile because I would be lying if I said yes.
Is there something specific that comes to mind?
00;08;23;12
I’m not proud of myself because I wasn’t there for my mother when she died.
00;08;50;16
She died the day my son was born, roughly 6 hours before he was born. We were all supposed to be at the house, but I had a morning appointment. When I woke up, my mother-in-law at the time told me, "Christopher, it's your dad," and I knew, I knew. To this day I regret not being there. It’s a constant statement in my mind, “You should have been there, you should have been there.”
Would I of saved her? No. With what was going on, I couldn’t have saved her. But I should have been there.
That element of ‘I should have’ - Do you feel like that is something that you will carry for the rest of your life?
00;10;59;12
I feel that I will let go of that, actually very soon. I'm hitting the better part of my life at 40, and there are many things I'm noticing that I'm no longer holding onto. Like anything else - time helps. It will be 17 years marking her anniversary on November 12th. With each passing year, just like with time and pain, it's not that the weight or feeling goes away; we just know how to carry it.
So yes, I feel that it will go away - what I feel is defining me or why I feel like when I don’t show up or fail someone I take it very seriously. It festers, but I do feel that eventually, yes.
“One of my favorite quotes is from Will Smith in After Earth: ‘Danger is real, fear is a choice.’”
