Fitness should be fun, not difficult: Cult crossFit trainer

If the thought of staying fit makes you lose sleep, especially over the hours in a gym or the food you will miss, you could not be further detached from reality, says Rishabh Telang, fitness expert and level-2 crossFit trainer with Cult fitness centres.

"It's a misconception that you need to daily spend hours in a gym to stay fit. It's even all right to eat out once in a while," says Telang, who has devised a novel model offering a combo of various activities such as boxing, mixed martial arts (MMA), Zumba, strength and conditioning along with yoga and meditation. The key, he says, is to break the monotony of training.

"What happens in a conventional gym is that even if you do a exercise for your abs one day or chest the next day, the whole process is repeated after a week. The monotony of doing the same exercises reduces your attendance over time," he told IANS in a telephonic interview.

Cult currently has eight fitness centres in Bengaluru and the fun way of staying fit that it shows attracted the attention of CureFit, a healthcare start-up launched by former Flipkart executives Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori.

CureFit, which is currently focusing on consolidating its preventive healthcare services before venturing into the cure part of it, acquired Cult last year. "With Cult, staying fit is never boring.

The concept of group exercises and a combination of activities can keep people excited about visiting their fitness centres," says Nagori, who believes the size of India's health and fitness business would triple in the next 10 years -- reaching Rs 300 billion from the current Rs 100 billion.

"Most gyms in India today are ill-equipped to train people the right way. We often come across people suffering the negative consequences of lifting weights or doing exercises in the wrong way," Nagori says, adding that by the end of the year they would scale up the number of training centres to 20.

CureFit recently acquired the The Tribe fitness chain that also offers a mix of activities just as Cult does. Explaining the advantage of engaging in activities that offer you functional fitness rather than just showing off your abs, fitness expert Shwetambari Shetty says that the body stops reacting to the same set of activities after some point of time.

A variety of activities can also help you get better results, adds Shwetambari, master trainer for Zumba at Tribe-Cult, who also believes in "eating clean" -- almost zero sugar, no to junk food.

The key to staying fit, after all, is consistency and if you miss out on your classes, the whole purpose of starting them gets defeated. "If you have something to look forward to every day in your fitness centre, the chances of missing out on your exercise sessions gets significantly reduced," Telang says.