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Article of the Week
Posted on: Thursday March 9th, 2006
Fitness Mania In India
Fitness Mania and Fitness Instructors
Pictures and Text by Sanjay Austa
Not many years ago hardly anyone heard of them in India. There were a rare breed of professionals who catered to the rich and the beautiful. Popular Bollywood film star Sanjay Dutt had one, so did Aishwarya Rai. But if an ordinary Indian wanted to be fit, he went for a morning jog or to the local gym where he helped himself to an array of machines or subjected himself to the whims of the gym boy, who doubled up as a trainer and cleaner. Not today. Fitness in India is now a whopping 2000 crore industry. Fitness experts being the lynchpin. They are upwardly mobile, educated, and have the requisite degree or experience and know all the ins and outs of keeping one in shape.
They teach us how to lose that extra flab, how to do those stomach crunches without straining our spinal column, from what angle to fit the weights, in short how to exercise the proper scientific way. They have, after all, studied the human anatomy meticulously in exclusive fitness instituties.
No wonder every urban Indian wants to have them. The middle-rung executive, stressed out CEOs, the portly politician, the self-conscious student, the middle-aged housewife - anybody who wants to be healthy and can pay for it. At home or at the gym, having a trainer is the latest status symbol of urban India, thanks to the increasing awareness about the importance of keeping healthy.
Take Kiran Sawhney, a successful fitness trainer from New Delhi, for instance. Her perfect hour-glass figure is an ideal for the women clients who hire her. She teaches at two sports clugs. Aerobic in one and aqua-aerobics in another. Besides the clubs, she has over six personal clients which include executives of a big company. "If you have the credentials, you are in demand", she says.
The credentials include a degree or diploma in fitness training from a reputable institute. Topping them all in India is Reebok's Fitness Centre. The Reebok training centres are in the four metropolitan cities, including New Delhi. The Reebok's centre has an intensive three-month fitness programme where learning the various exercise steps is only a small part. The thrust is on holistic knowledge about the human body and its functions. There is a tough written test at the end of three months along with practicals. "Not many people in my batch passed", says Aarti Prasad, a fitness trainer who began teaching at a sports club in Greater Kailash 1, Delhi, after completing her course at Reeboks. She also has personal clients and says it is a profession that will grow manifold as more and more people feel the need to be healthy.
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