All of us know how much of a fitness freak is Virat Kohli. He is currently the fittest player in the Indian team.
Additionally, Kohli will not only be remembered as a batsman but as someone with high fitness levels in cricket.
He has now been playing cricket for 15 years now but has maintained his fitness levels. Thus, the question on everyone’s lips is how does he do it?
On the other hand, Kohli has been scoring centuries, winning games, and breaking records for fun which his fans love.
IPL franchise, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s strength and conditioning coach, Basu Shankar has recently revealed Kohli’s fitness secret in an interview.
Speaking on RCB Podcast Season 2, he has given some insights on how Kohli’s fitness world has impacted other players.
The onus of this change (passion for fitness) is on Virat. I have been seeing him since 2009. In 2014, he said he has a stiff back and can you do something about it? It was only for six weeks and we could not do much then. But in 2015, he said you should do a bigger role. So, I told him we will make a template for you and I will have to make drastic changes to the training that you are doing now. He asked a lot of technical questions and after several convsersations back and forth, he said: ‘Ok let’s start.’
Shankar also praises the fitness levels of Dinesh Karthik
Moreover, Basu has worked with not only Kohli but several other athletes.
Virat has seen me training Deepika Pallikal (India squash player and the wife of Dinesh Karthik) and that time she was in the top 10. So, Kohli told me ‘don’t treat me like a cricketer and work with me like an individual athlete.’ So, I told him you will have to train like an Olympic athlete and I used to quote Novak Djokovic to him then. I am not tired of telling this but I have never seen a guy like Virat Kohli. He can do the simple, most boring things of life every day and it does not matter whether he is performing or not (on the field). But that zeal and extraordinary passion towards excellence is mind boggling. It helped me put across my syllabus to him.
On the other hand, Basu has also worked with the Indian team. Additionally, he gave the example of Dinesh Karthik.
People are always caught up with visual fitness, they look at you (an athlete) and they say oh yes, he looks so fit. But athletic fitness is very different. Yes, Virat is very fit and he looks (fit) too, the cosmetics, and he is blessed that way. He is extremely powerful. It is the same thing with Dinesh Karthik…his resilience and robustness on the cricket field is unbelievable. I mean, he’s the Ryan Giggs of cricket. He’s never been injured much and hardly loses any time on the field. So, once the captain is brought into the theory the rest was easier. My theory is that once you hit one, you hit five, once you hit five, you’ll hit 50 and once you hit 50, you hit the nation.
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