I had always believed that certain basic principles of sports can teach you to succeed at life in general. Just as I realized that to win at my sport, simply training my body was not enough, I had to condition my mind to never give up, to be disciplined, to face uncomfortable situations, to keep getting back up after failures.

As a professional athlete who cycles 200 km, swims 3 km, and runs 10 kms almost every other day as part of training, resilience is a term that is synonymous to a lot of my daily existence. 

What is resilience to me?

And as coach responsible for the athletic careers of many a talent, to be able to push others to limits that was inconceivable to themselves, and to excel in a category of sport that stretches the limits of physical and mental abilities;

again, resilience, strength and evolution play a huge role in achieving success.

To be able to keep getting up after repeated failures, to keep trying with grit and fervour till you achieve your goal. To keep pushing hard even when the going gets tough.

Having done races like the Desert 500, where I cycled for more than 500 kms, non-stop in the peak desert heat and cold of Rajasthan; The Deccan Cliffhanger a 640km ride from Pune to Goa for which I hold several records and have completed it under 24 hours! Not to mention the several Ironman triathlons I have done. It is safe to say that the kind of mental and physical stamina required to achieve such ambitious goals have to be conditioned and honed in the right way.

From my experience, I have learnt that resilience is not a circumstantial character trait, but a value that can be adopted and sharpened with the right kind of training and discipline. Half the battle for me is won in the mind. There are certain mantras and formulas that I use to help me condition myself. Something like “Mind over Mind” is a kind of technique I use when I am pushing my limits.

Science is now blurring the lines of conventional sports training and is making athletes stronger and faster and smarter. It is not just about training the body but also helping athletes create a strong mental backing to achieve high performance. My methodologies use science to break down the complexities of

endurance coaching for my students, through certain formulas and methodologies of training the mind and body.

One of the most memorable experience was of coaching a student who is (fully) visually impaired/Blind and talk about his journey of training to become India’s first visually impaired athlete to complete an Ironman triathlon in an international forum! Overcoming the barriers of being physically challenged, and training for something as gruelling as an Ironman, itself is a lesson in discipline, hard work and resilience.

I incorporate a lot of specially designed training sessions to sharpen an athlete’s cognitive abilities. For example, some of the sessions are designed to overwhelm the athlete with so much fatigue under already stressful conditions, and techniques of overcoming these using scientific physiological and psychological methodologies.

Because, when the going gets tough, the tough get going!