Cheetah Yagnesh Shetty on verge of setting Guinness World Record

Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai (EP)

Mumbai, Dec 8: Even as Indian cinema celebrates its hundred years of existence, Kannadiga Cheeta Yagnesh Shetty who has been working with Hindi cinema for the last thirty five years is on the verge of setting a unique Guinness World Record.

Yagnesh, who trains film stars in martial arts and body building, has trained 125 films stars of three generations in the last 35 years. No other physical fitness trainer in any cinema industry in the world has worked for so long or trained so many stars.

Nor is there any other fitness guru in Bollywood who has trained film stars at different stages of their careers as efficiently as him since the 1970s.  He has trained fathers and sons among generations of film stars too.

The stars trained by him include:

Dilip Kumar, Pran, Dev Anand, Ajith, Naseeruddin Shah, Danny Denzongpa, Amitabh Bachchan, Jitendra, Amrish Puri, Mithun Chakravarthy, Anil Kapoor, Govinda, Sanjay Dutt, Gulshan Grover, Raj Babbar, Kabir Bedi, Sunil Shetty, Ajay Devgan, Nana Patekar, Shakti Kapoor, Ashutosh Govarkar, Akshay Khanna, Arbaz Khan, Sanjay Kapoor, Kamal Sadana, Arman Kohli, Deepak Tijori, Aditya Pancholi, Ashish Sheikh, Paresh Raval, Tinu Anand, Sharad Saxena, John Abraham, Farhan Akhtar, Uday Chopra, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Puru Rajkumar, Chanky Pande, Avinash Vadhvan, Arshad Varsi, Dino Moria, Kunal Khemu, Vishwajith Pradhan, Gurmeet Chowdhury, Vijay Anand, Himanshu Malhotra, Hanil Hilal, Karthik Shetty, Ayush Tandon, Ganesh Venkatraman, Herman Baveja, Vindu Dara Singh, Siddanth Karnik, Abhishek Avasti, Aryan Rajesh, Sarvar Ahuja, Rohan Kapoor, Akshay Sethi, Mister Lal, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Rekha, Neelam, Dimple Kapadia, Ayesha Zulkha, Tabu, Farah, Mandakini, Sonam Rai, Madhuri Dikshit, Juhi Chawla, Shilpa Shirodkar, Namratha Shirodkar, Karishma Kapoor, Sonika Gil, Bipasha Basu, Neha Dupia, Karina Kapoor, Ravina Tandon, Priyanka Chopra, Kaudia Seshla, Isha Koptikar, Misti, Tara Sharma, Amrita Arora, Kim Sharma, Pooja Batra, Sayali Bhagat, Shilpa Shukla, Soha Ali Khan, Harshita Bhat, Soni Razdan, Divyanka Tripati, Hansika Motwani, Sagarika Ghatge, Dibanita Choudhury, Jaki Chan, Roger Moore, Suraj Sharma, Guatham Joglekar, Advin Mahajan, Ajinkya Dev, Sunny Singh, Kunal Goswami, Ben Kingsley, Steven Saigal, Krishna Abhishek, Vinay Sapru, Ankita Lokhande, Anita Ayub and Sharad Malhotra.

Yagnesh Shetty was born on August 1, 1956 in Ninjur of Karkala taluk. Son of the late Dr Srinivas Shetty and the late Gulabi Shetty, he completed his primary and high school education at Ninjur high school and PUC at Manipal Junior College.

He joined Valley View International Hotel as a waiter soon after his education. Several foreign students studying in KMC were staying there. Among them, Uyi Sensi of China was a martial arts expert.  When Uyi practised Karate, Yagnesh would watch and try to learn. He later got a chance to learn Karate under his tutelage.

Yagnesh was attracted by the posture of a cheetah on hunt and studied its movements and assimilated them into martial arts.  He developed a unique martial arts style with it which came to be known as 'Cheetah'.

He then went to Mumbai in search of greener pastures and joined a five star hotel called Sea Rock.  Though his work kept him busy, he practiced Karate whenever he got free time.  He soon got promoted as a trainer at the hotel's health club, and that is when his life took a new turn. He came across Hindi film stars Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakravorthy and Jitendra there.  He soon started a workshop of martial arts at Lokhandwala in Andheri teaching martial arts and body building. By and by, he became a permanent fitness guru for Bollywood. He has been training newcomers along with veteran film stars for the last 35 years.

Among the international stars, he has trained Ben Kingsley, Roger Moore and worked with Jackie Chan also. He has directed several fight scenes for films and acted in some of them.  He has also produced a film.

He has also struggled hard to make the art of self-defence reach the common people.  In the wake of increasing crimes against women, he has started a free programme titled 'Nirbhaya' to train women in self-defence.  He has been conferred the Rajiv Gandhi Excellence Award besides several other awards for his achievements.