This is an interview, not a fact sheet. What follows is one man speaking, and it should be read that way. Timur Sabirov heads the Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation of Uzbekistan; the federation's own chronicle records his name in full as Sobirov Timur Raisovich. Part of what he says can be checked against documents: the federation's open archive, the executive lists of the Asian and world federations, the press. Part of it stays personal memory and personal judgement. We separate the two inside the text, and at the end we list what we could not put a document under.
Love at first sight
"I was 12 when I first came to the gym," Timur recalls. "I saw all of it — the music, the guys, the iron — and something stirred in me. Love at first sight." From that day, not a single workout was missed. By ninth grade he weighed around 90 kg. By the way, Timur holds two university degrees.
This was the late 1990s. A gym in Tashkent back then usually meant a basement: home-welded racks, plates of mismatched diameter, heating whenever the building felt like it. There was no internet; method came from video cassettes and translated magazines passed hand to hand. The federation's book describes the same episode with almost the same numbers: the current president walked into a newly opened basement gym at twelve, and from thirteen to nineteen he did not miss a single day of training.
One detail is missing from this conversation, and the picture is incomplete without it. His first coach was Armen Pashikyan, one of the founders of Uzbek bodybuilding. He was the one who prepared his student for that first stage, and he remembers it this way: "I was preparing Timur Sabirov for competition at the time. I thought, I'll put little Timur out there. He was 18, and his proportions were already excellent."
What sits behind "not a single workout was missed"
The line sounds good right up until you look at what that regimen was made of. Sports nutrition barely existed in the country, and neither did amino acids or vitamin complexes. Protein came from food, and the boys earned the money for that food themselves: washing cars at the market, working with a father, coaching for pay from the age of seventeen. Armen Pashikyan sums up the preparation of those years in a single number: "Timur and I ate 100 egg whites a day."
That context matters for everything Timur says later about nutrition, supplements and discipline. His view was shaped not by a supplement-shop window but by a decade in which there was no window. Hence the constant return to three things: routine, food, repeatability. None of them can be bought.
From athlete to federation president
Today Timur Sabirov is the president of Uzbekistan's national Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation.
The dates line up with a neat symmetry. The federation was created in 2006 and held two national events in its very first year: the Uzbekistan Championship on 2 April and the Uzbekistan Cup on 1 October. In that same 2006, according to the federation's book, he stepped on stage for the first time and won the under-90 kg category; he became absolute champion of Uzbekistan at nineteen. The organisation's founding year and his first competitive year are the same year.
International posts are verified from the federations' own lists rather than from an interview, and a reader is better off checking them directly.
| Organisation | Position | Where to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation of Uzbekistan (UzFBF) | President | The federation's open archive at uzfbf.pro: 137 tournaments from 1987 to 2025, 2,579 photographs, 140 documents |
| Asian federation ABBF | Deputy President | Executive committee list at abbf.asia |
| World federation WBPF | Medical and Anti-Doping Committee | Committee list at wbpsf.org |
One more public entry from recent years has nothing to do with elite competition, but it shows what the federation does between tournaments. On 15 May 2024, at Tashkent airport, six federation athletes pulled a 13.5-tonne ATR 72-600 aircraft one hundred metres in 46.7 seconds and took a Guinness World Record. Gazeta.uz reported it on 13 June 2024, naming Timur Sabirov as the federation's president.
Sport or business?
"Both. Bodybuilding was born in America, and American sport is built on commerce. But when Uzbekistan's flag is raised, that's already patriotism." The gym is equipped with American Life Fitness machines and inspired by the legendary Gold's Gym.
That formula grew out of a specific grievance. He names an injustice as the turning point of his career: athletes were promised prize money and never paid. "That's when I set myself a goal: athletes will not suffer like this." The answer was the first commercial tournament in Uzbekistan's history with a real prize fund. In the federation's archive it stands as the "Night of Champions" show tournament of 20 December 2011, with sixty photographs attached to the entry.
After that, commerce and the flag stopped being opposites. In 2012 Tashkent hosted the 46th Asian Championship; the archive entry names competitors from 25 countries. In 2015 the city hosted the 49th Asian Championship together with the ABBF congress: 23 countries and more than three hundred athletes, according to the federation's report. From 1 to 7 October 2021 Tashkent hosted the World Championship under the WBPF. The flag he talks about went up on specific days in specific halls, and those days are on record.
Busting the main myth — about doping
"There are many categories in bodybuilding. Beach fitness — there you can reach results through your own work. But when it comes to large muscle mass at a professional level, the body can't sustain such numbers on its own without specialist support." What matters is work, discipline and nutrition — not pills.
This answer gets retold wrongly in both directions. He is not saying "everyone is on drugs", and he is not saying "everything is clean". He is separating levels: amateur categories such as beach fitness, and a professional stage where extremes compete against extremes. Those are different loads on the body and different demands for supervision, and mixing them in one conversation gets you nowhere.
The practical boundary here is hard and does not depend on anyone's opinion. Selecting hormonal therapy is medical practice in any country. A coach who prescribes drugs or "protocols" is acting outside his qualification, and that is not caution, it is a description of the law and of the profession. Where exactly that line runs, and what happens to the body on the other side of it, is covered separately: steroids and the limit of a coach's work.
One rarely mentioned post belongs to this same topic: Timur Sabirov sits on the Medical and Anti-Doping Committee of the world federation WBPF. The man answering the doping question in this interview serves on the body that handles exactly that question inside his own federation.
From what age can a child go to the gym?
"It's a Soviet-era misconception that strength training stunts growth. If you squat correctly, the vertebrae only develop faster. I started at 12 myself." What actually stunts a teenager's growth is fast food and excess sugar.
On the main point his position matches what the professional bodies publish. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Strength and Conditioning Association agree in their position documents on youth resistance training: there is no evidence that properly organised strength training stunts growth. The risk comes not from the exercises but from maximal loads, one-rep-max attempts and training without technique or adult supervision. The second half of the sentence, about fast food and sugar, is a practitioner's own judgement rather than a citation.
What a short interview leaves out, and what we add: a teenager needs a medical check before the first session, and the first weeks belong under the eye of a coach who works with that age group. We cover the question of age in detail, including what changes at 12, 14 and 16: from what age you can train in a gym.
PROFORM — a creation that keeps growing
PROFORM began as a small studio in the city center. Today it's a chain of gyms in Tashkent, built on Timur's experience as an athlete, organizer and federation leader.
That experience shows in details that rarely make it into advertising. Free weights and racks are laid out so that the compound lifts still have room at peak hour. The Life Fitness equipment was chosen not for the badge but because it gets serviced and reaches its third year without play in the joints. The coaching staff was assembled around competition preparation, which is why in the gym floor a man peaking for the stage and a man back for the first time in ten years both look equally in place.
Timur's message
"I'm 40, and my shape speaks for itself. To those who want to look the same, I'll say one thing: keep learning. Bodybuilding is my whole life."
"Keep learning" is not decoration in that sentence, and you can check it against what the federation does with the coaching profession. On 21 February 2014 it published thirty examination papers for instructors, four tasks in each: theory, two client cases with a real person's age, health and goal, and the structure of the sport itself. Since 2016 retraining courses have run together with the MASTER TRAINING institute. He offers the amateur the same principle: understand it first, then lift.
What this interview does not verify
- The age of the first gym visit. Here he says 12, the federation's book also says twelve, and in another conversation he says 13. It is the same stretch of life; we leave the one-year discrepancy visible rather than trimming sources to fit each other.
- "Two university degrees", "around 90 kg in ninth grade", "I'm 40". These are his own words; we hold no document behind them.
- Fast food and sugar as growth inhibitors. A practitioner's position, not a citation.
- "The body can't sustain such numbers on its own". The judgement of someone who has watched the professional stage for twenty years, not a measurement.
- PROFORM starting as "a small studio in the city center". We did not find the date or address of that first studio in open sources.
PROFORM DINAMO, Tashkent, Mirzo Ulugbek Avenue 8a. The club was founded by Timur Sabirov, is open around the clock and offers a free club tour; formats and memberships are on the site.