Ace sports and fitness expert Ranadeep Moitra believes that the standard practices for attaining great health will never change irrespective of whether there is a pandemic or not. “If you have taken care of your body for the past many years, COVID-19 will have no or minimal effect on your health system. Even if you do get infected, recovery will never be a big issue. You train for life. You come to the gym to deal with the unseen, unforeseen contingencies that life may throw on your face. How different is COVID-19,” asks the founder of Endorphins, one of the city’s top fitness and corrective studios.
But according to Moitra, many in their zest to attain good health are merely starting to run or practise yoga without proper knowledge, that’s causing them more harm than good. “Running is a magic potion for health but how many people can actually run? I see people all the time trudging along, stomping and doing all kinds of things instead of running. Surely that can't be good for their joints. To get full benefits out of running, there are certain biomechanical and bio-energetic parameters that need to be met. Yoga too, as it is taught, is very generic and does not look into individual dysfunctions, imbalances and deficits, particularly, community yoga programmes. So, if a person is looking at bespoke training programmes, gyms are imperative,” says Moitra, who is a force to reckon with in the world of fitness.
Moitra also feels that fitness houses have a duty to change the perception of gyms from vanity centres to corrective and preventive medicine centres since the current medical industry is more geared towards symptom management instead of healing and cure. "The beauty of corrective exercise and scientific assessment," he tells us, "is that it has the ability to predict and prevent a future trauma or disaster since it prepares or trains a body correctly before an injury or trauma sets in".
“For general fitness, there are certain parameters that need to be looked into including cardiovascular fitness and muscular endurance and strength since muscles have several metabolic benefits including sensitivity to insulin and reducing cholesterol and lipid levels. Muscle also provides joint support and stability. A general fitness programme should try to incorporate all these parameters. 30 minutes to an hour can provide a lot of health benefits,” adds Moitra.
Moitra himself has been a victim of debilitating ankylosing spondylitis—a type of spinal arthritis that chiefly affect young males– that cost him his flourishing cricketing career at the prime of his time. And the search for a permanent cure led him on a path to fitness, with Moitra now heading three corrective studios in Kolkata besides training and healing national sportsmen.
“All autoimmune diseases start in the gut. If the gut is healthy, we can prevent an autoimmune attack which is triggered off by our white blood cells basically trying to protect us. So, take care of the gut and exercise to maintain systemic wellness in the body,” signs off the busy coach.