Do Indian shooters ignore physical fitness? Veenu Sandhu finds out
Abhinav Bindra is in Munich till the end of February. His family cannot reach him. The instructions from the young shooter are clear: don’t call me, I will call you. “For Abhinav, his fitness regime is above all else,” says his father, A S Bindra. “He is in Germany preparing for the 2012 Olympics and does not want anybody to distract him.” That’s the stuff Olympians are made of.Contrast him with Samaresh Jung, who doesn’t have a coach and whose fitness seems to be on the decline. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Jung won five golds, a silver and a bronze. He got the David Dixon Award for “Best Athlete of the 18th Commonwealth Games”, and was dubbed “Goldfinger”.
Barely four years later, at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India, Jung finished third in the men’s singles 25 metre standard pistol event. Just before the Games, he acknowledged the decline and said he was under-prepared because he did not have a regular coach.
“A coach will always tell you it is good to exercise, but I don’t have a coach,” Jung says now. He adds that for an air pistol specialist, it is good to have a low heart rate. It is also important to have strong stomach, back and leg muscles. “I don’t have a fixed exercise regime, I’m too lazy,” he admits. “But then, shooting is not a very physical sport. As long as I can control my muscles and my body, and stand for three hours at a stretch, I am fine.”
Have Indian shooters, right from the days of Karni Singh, paid little attention to physical fitness? The sport does not require them to run or swim, so is it just the eye and quicksilver reflexes that matter?
Speaking from Munich, Bindra’s coach Owe Riesterer says: “A shooter’s blood system has to be developed, the oxygen level maintained, the heartbeat controlled, and stamina built.” Bindra currently spends five or six hours a day on fitness training. This includes power or strength endurance and cardiovascular exercises. “Some sessions are being held at [an effective] height of 2,000 metre-plus in a high-altitude chamber,” Riesterer says. Fat burning is also part of the schedule.
This is the second session of Bindra’s 20-day training. The first was held in December. Before the London Olympics next year, he will complete six such sessions. Riesterer says Bindra is “an extremely motivated student and wants to win at least another gold at the 2012 Olympics”. Prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, too, the shooter had a rigorous schedule akin to commando training — spider web jumps, high-bar balance, crossing the “Burma bridge”, and climbing an 8 metre-high wall.
Anisa Sayyed, the shooter who won two golds at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, says few are as fitness-conscious as Bindra. “I have myself put on so much weight,” she says. Sayyed says she was a football player for five years and was very fit then. “But I haven’t focused on fitness of late,” she says, adding with a good-natured laugh, “If Heena Sidhu [another woman pistol shooter] is size zero, I am size 100.” She and her shooting partner Rahi Sarnobat, who won their first Commonwealth gold in the 25 metre pistol event, both need to tone up. “While hard weight-training is not good because the muscles become tight, body weight does make a difference,” the 30-year-old shooter says.
So far, Sayyed says, she is technically sound, mentally strong and is able to practise while standing for six or seven hours at a go, which is why her performance is good. But her weight, she agrees, could take its toll in the future. “When I have a coach, I know he will make me exercise a lot,” she says. Like Jung, Sayyed has no coach. When she participates in the forthcoming 34th National Games in Jharkhand, it will be on the basis of personal training alone.
Studies show that a shooter should control his pulse rate and train to spot changes in muscle position which could lead to errors. A degree of flexibility is also needed to deal with physical or mental stress and calls for exercises that strengthen the cardiovascular system and build stamina, along with flexibility training and light weightlifting.
One the few shooters who could control his pulse rate at will was Briton Malcolm Cooper, the first person to bag the gold in the 50 metre Rifle 3 Positions event at two consecutive Olympics (Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988). He would run daily and swim no less than 30 laps of the pool. He also practised yoga.
Trap shooter Ronjan Singh Sodhi, who set a world record with a score of 195 in the Double Trap event at the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in Italy last year, says he meditates to build concentration. “I was a fitness freak and very fit when I started my career,” he says, “but I’m taking it easy and doing the right things that help me in the sport.”
When he started, he says, fitness was not given serious thought. “Now we have fitness trainers, dietitians, etc.” Even so, few shooters seem to take physical fitness seriously. Sodhi’s shotgun weighs 3.5 kg. “I need to strengthen my arms and shoulders because that’s the basic movement involved in the sport,” he says. Sodhi agrees that a certain level of fitness is required. “Under high pressure you will only be able to control your heart rate if you are in good physical condition,” he says. Ask him how he achieves that, and he replies with a smile, “I purposely put myself into all types of difficult situations in life.” He does not elaborate.
But he does add that, because the competitions last a whole day, the energy level has to be maintained through a right diet. “We need slow-release protein, so a mix of a high-protein and moderate-carb diet is recommended during a competition.” Sodhi is yet to qualify for the 2012 Olympics; the big test is just a month away, in March, at the 2011 World Cup series in Chile. Others who have qualified for the Olympics so far are Gagan Narang and Harion Singh.
Viren Rasquinha, COO of Olympic Gold Quest, a programme he started to facilitate training for Indian athletes who will compete for Olympic golds, says: “Shooters need to be physically stable and develop their shoulder and back muscles.” There are three positions for shooting — standing, kneeling and prone (lying on the stomach). “A shooter often holds an unnatural position for hours, and that’s what he needs to work on. Each shooter has his own regime,” Rasquinha adds, but “he does need to keep the heart rate under control. Because when you are pointing a gun, your heartbeat does race a bit.” And that, say the experts, is where fitness training comes to the rescue.
So far, Indian shooters haven’t done badly at all.
But after the record haul of 30 medals, including 14 golds, at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the performance at the Guangzhou Asian Games had unmistakably slipped. The shooters brought home just eight medals. At that time Bindra remarked: “We could have done better.”
Just before the Games in Delhi, Jung had said, “The one who performs on the big day, wins. The past record doesn’t count.” The record has shown that Indian shooters can do that. The one other thing they need to do to keep winning is to focus on fitness.
