Public speaker and founder of fitness discovery platform, Gympik, Amaresh Ojha, is all set to help individuals discover the nuances of making fitness a habit with his debut book Fitness Habits – Breaking The Barriers To Fitness. Co-authored by Subhra Moitra, published by Srishti Publications, the book as Ojha explains, “Is your guide on how to look at your failure in fitness as your progress and continue even if you fall short of motivation.” Excerpts from an interview.
What convinced you to pen down a book when you already had Gympik?
This book is my attempt to share a holistic approach to fitness and guide people towards building fitness a habit, bit by bit. You may talk everything about fitness but may not bring an iota of change if the habit doesn’t exist, it’s about building the base and guiding people to work on the ground before randomly practicing fitness and falling apart every single time. Once the habit is established you can fly higher, choose any form you like but let fitness get instilled in your daily life first – this book is the first step that I feel has not been talked about much.
The book has been co-authored by Subhra. What was the writing process like and what were your individual contributions to the book?
Subhra has been there as a Content Manager since the inception of Gympik. While I was behind the ideation of the book, Subhra helped me putting my thoughts in words. From dotting every i’s and crossing every t’s to endless research, reworks, and edits, Subhra ensured the message of the book was conveyed just the way I wanted.
Tell us about the book in brief.
Fitness Habits is an operating manual that focuses on the tried and tested method of making fitness a habit. It will also help you to create an urge to hit the gym again or the jogging track following a particular cue. This book is your guide on how to look at your failure in fitness as your progress and continue even if you fall short of motivation. After a series of research and studies, what I offer in this book is a fool-proof plan that is relevant to people who want to start off fitness, or had started in the past but couldn’t continue, and people who have an on-and-off camaraderie with fitness. I offer an integrated model that will change the way you perceive fitness and help you make fitness a habit.
At a time when people are hooked to videos and internet tutorials, do you think a book will draw attention?
Internet today is overloaded with information and the truth is we don’t know who is credible. Learning something in depth needs study and tutorials on internet or short videos are a far cry from helping you grasp even the basic knowledge of what you are looking for. The information you compile in a book is further reviewed by the publishers and many other experts which makes it a credible source of information; whereas the information on the internet is changing every hour making it difficult to choose from one source to another. Moreover, books are less confusing, precise, detailed and contain all information about a single topic. I think the trend of internet will never be able to alter the importance and authenticity of books.
What's next after this?
The idea of my second book in my mind. Currently I’m researching on that. I hope we will be able to finalise in a couple of months and start working on it. It is related to fitness I can tell you that for now and it’s going to be an interesting read, again it’s not going to be a little different from the fitness books in the market.