Sucking your navel in and other exercises

Leaving home at 7 am to attend someone else's fitness routine makes one acutely, and unpleasantly so, aware of one's own lagging form. Still, the editor's orders are the editor's orders.

So there I was, at Jai Mehta's (of Saurashtra Cements, also actress Juhi Chawla's husband) home in Malabar Hill, trying to convince everybody that I would be just a fly-on-the-wall, even as Mehta good-humouredly suggests that he thinks otherwise.

His trainer, Mehernaaz Damania, who's been working with him for over three years, brings me up to speed on his case: very disciplined, focused on building flexibility and core strength over weight loss and muscle mass, reasonable fitness levels, but plagued with a chronic back problem, and with just that little bit of mid-section flab.

That's where it's a perfect fit of trainer and client. As much as Damania is a personal fitness trainer in the conventional sense, she propagates a corrective, holistic approach to being healthy. She's also a therapist for back-pain.

But at this point, she's also as heavy-eyed as me. "I'm always hoping he cancels class so I can sleep in," she laughs. But he rarely does. For Mehta is a disciplined man. "Too many people focus only on the aesthetics, he understands fitness as optimising his body's functionality," says Damania. Besides the three hours a week with Damania, he also allots three hours a week to yoga. He is asleep by 10.30 every night and eats almost too sensibly.

Mehta's regimen is a concise hour and no more (it's also full of friendly banter "" "She talks way too much," says Mehta of Damania's loquaciousness). It consists of exercises that place stability and flexibility ahead of strength training and weight-loss. Damania combines different forms of training, including resistance training, yoga and the use of Swiss and medicinal balls in every possible hue and size. "I am not here to become buff," says Mehta.

Mehta has sustained an injury or two in his time. A passion for motor racing made certain of that. From fractures to a slipped disc, he's seen it all. "Physiotherapy has a standard set of five curative exercises for back problems like Jai's much more detailed assessment is required, of lifestyle first and then clinical parameters like joint flexibility, muscle length and postural analysis. Exercises should only be designed based on the combination of all those variables,"says Damania.

So there are no overhead presses and no pushing movements incorporated. Between sets, Mehta recuperates by sitting on a Swiss ball and bouncing gently. "Balls challenge stability the most, and activate postural and abdominal muscles, all the while lubricating the spine," explains Damania. In fact, Mehta says he alternates between sitting on a chair and a ball at his work desk. He would have that discipline!

Damania, I realise, is a pocket-sized martinet. Check your posture, bend your knees, inhale, exhale, suck your navel in, she says with authority that belies her tiny frame. Pulling your navel in while working out, according to her, holds your pelvic area firm so there is minimum pressure on the back. "If I see a client's form breaking I stop the set rather than push him to finish with incorrect form."

Everybody needs breaks and Mehta thankfully takes them too. In fact, he's just returned from a two-week trip to the United States during which time he's gained two and a half kilos. He's brought back other baggage too...of the more heartwarming kind "" shopping bags. Mehta has an undeniable penchant for luxury purchases. Well, shopping bags can be heavy... so that's some form of weight training.

An hour later, all's been wrapped up. Mehta doesn't so much as break into a single bead of sweat. But that's more a function of his metabolism than the workout, for he says he's plenty tired. Good-byes are exchanged just as the rest of the Mehta household swings into motion.