A pioneer of the fitness movement
Chetna Banerjee

TODAY, fitness clubs and gyms have mushroomed in all corners of the city. And it has become a fad to throng these health centres to be perceived as a fitness freak. But years ago, when Dr Vijay Rattan, reader in the Public Administration Department, Directorate of Correspondence Studies , Panjab university, started weight training as a serious hobby, there were no gyms or health clubs in the City. Just a few trainers, who used to train privately. Local students used to watch with awe some foreign students, particularly from the South Pacific, train seriously with weights. Otherwise, weight-training was not much heard of. Generally it was mistaken for weight-lifting. It used to take quite an effort convincing people that the barbell could be used for fitness purposes also. Abroad, bodybuilding had already developed into a scientific sport and was already quite popular.

A pioneer of the fitness movement in Chandigarh and among the first few people to set up a gym at home, in the early 80s , Dr rattan had won a Rotary Group Study Exchange Award and visited USA, mainly covering the four states of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. There he utilised his spare time visiting a number of gyms and health clubs in a number of states, including California and New York. He studied the weight-training and bodybuilding equipment in vogue.

He also had the rare opportunity of meeting and interacting with some of the topmost personalities and world champions in bodybuilding. He met Mr Joe Weider, Trainer of Champions and Owner of the Weider Health and Fitness empire at his Woodland Hills World Headquarters in California. His magazine, “Muscle & Fitness”, is still popular with millions of readers all over the world. His brother Ben Weider was organising the famous “Mr Olympia” Championship every year.

He visited the “Mecca of bodybuilding”— the one and only “World Gym” at Santa Monica, California—which was home to bodybuilding’s biggest stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane and many more. There he met Mr. Joe Gold, the Owner of the World Gym. Among others, he also interacted with Danny Padilla, a Mr. Olympia title winner.

In San Diego, he met Dan Peterson, “Mr Western America”, and Ms Doughdee Marie, also a bodybuilding champion. At another Gym, he met renowned bodybuilders David Paul and his brother, both famous as “The Barbarian Brothers”.

Later, during his stay in London, he also visited a number of gyms and met some of the top British bodybuilders and learnt how bodybuilders trained there and the kind of equipment they used.

Though he brought back a number of small equipment from abroad, he could not bring a multi-gym. However, back home he designed and made a compact folding home gym, which occupies little space and can be folded and easily transported. On this, more than 20 weight-training exercises can be done. This became a very useful addition to his basic gym, already equipped with a lot of free weights, specialised barbells and both fixed and variable dumbbells, and other gadgets.

But what made him a fitness freak ? Says he, “For everybody, essentially, it is the physical fitness that counts to get the best out of life. You can ignore your fitness at your own peril. Age, colour, sex or profession are no bar. You have to be fit to lead a healthy life. In competition involving physiological prowess, without fitness you can’t win a medal in any sport or achieve success in athletics. Fitness enables you to enjoy and do anything better”.

Fitness is also related to ageing, he elaborates. Age has two dimensions. One, chronological age and the other, biological age. “You can’t do anything about the chronological age. Time waits for nobody. You can’t slow it down or stop it. The chronological age would advance at its own pace.”

“It’s the biological part or physiological degeneration that attracts our attention. Yes, you may not be able to stop biological ageing also, but advances in science, exercise and nutrition have shown that the ageing process can definitely be slowed down by 75 per cent, if not reversed through a scientifically designed regular fitness regimen”.

The starting point here is exercise that leads to fitness. First one must understand what is meant by fitness and then how it can be achieved through proper exercise. The four pillars of fitness are: strength, flexibility, stamina and proper mental attitude or approach. Different exercise schedules involving anaerobic exercise like weight-training, stretching or yoga, aerobic exercises, etc. are designed for achieving the first three goals, respectively. Whereas, proper mental attitude is also very essential and it comes from an understanding of what is the scientific basis of fitness and how to achieve it.

“Weight training can be said to be the mother of all fitness programmes. It is basically training against resistance. It is fundamental to increasing strength and reshaping bodies”, he opines. In other words, it can be used to increase muscle strength, lose fat, build muscle mass, improve muscle tone and bone density. It helps in improving the muscle to fat ratio in the body and also makes one’s metabolism more efficient. So, a scientifically designed weight-training exercise programme is useful for not only for body-building but is also indispensable for enhancing body’s capacity to deliver in any sport or excel in any athletic event.

That is why weight-training is so popular these days. Also thanks to television and cable boom and health conscious movie stars, go to any gym or health club and you’ll invariably find weight training equipment of one form or another. Both free weights including dumb bells (fixed or variable) and barbells as well as multi-gyms are common. On a multi-gym you could do a number of exercises all being a part of one compact unit. You may also come across single station weight-training equipment in some gyms on which each muscle/muscle group is separately exercised.

A common question is that which of the two is better: exercising with free weights or machines? “It is best to follow a regimen involving a judicious mix of both because each has its merits and demerits. Machines pose their limitation that having been designed with average person in mind they may not offer optimum movements for each and every individual. Whereas, with free weights alone you cannot optimally isolate and exercise every muscle for best results”, he advises.

In local gyms, you’ll find only multi-gyms/ exercise machines with design based on anti-gravity principle. Such equipment is very old if not outdated. Outdated in the sense that there is better equipment available giving much better results. Such new exercise equipment had been invented and used abroad for more than 20 years now. These are Cam-based machines yet to make appearance in gyms and health clubs here.

To illustrate the difference between the two kinds of equipment, in the anti-gravity principle based machines as available in local gyms, in an exercise, say bicep curl, the bicep is not hit at full intensity throughout the range of motion. Only in certain segment of the arc of the curling movement the bicep is fully hit and at other segments load shifts to other muscles or joints and it is only partially hit. However, in Cam-based machines the bicep is hit with full and variable constant resistance throughout the range of the curling movement thus giving much better results per repetition than the old machines. This is true as well for other muscles exercised on the Cam-based machines.

 

How to set up a gym at home

*Just like we have a drawing room, kitchen, bedroom, etc. in homes, ideally we must have an exercise room as well. If that is not feasible, some space, even if small, should be earmarked for exercise. So that whenever one comes into that area, one automatically got into mood to exercise.

*The fitness zone can be spruced up posters, pictures related to exercise and possibly have provision for music to make exercising enjoyable and fun. Architects should take of this aspect right at the designing stage of a house or a flat.

*You do not need fancy equipment for doing a basic daily fitness routine of weight-training. You can start with having a pair of fixed dumbbells of weight as per your need and capacity.

*Next, you can have a simple barbell and about hundred pounds of barbell plates. If you can manage a small exercising bench also, you have all that is required for a good daily weight-training fitness workout.

*It would be better if you get a simple weight-training exercise routine, split or otherwise, designed specially for you as per your body type and requirements by somebody experienced and trained. And don’t forget to pay equal attention to diet and nutrition and proper rest. Remember, you don’t have to train very hard. No medals are at stake. Just a daily nice and peppy workout should keep you fit and fine.