How grossly undervalued are movement and physical activity in our country.

I am a 90s kid. I studied in a school in Patna, Bihar, followed by engineering in Chennai.

Things that were common during my school academics were - average grades, insane amounts of fun, chutti chutti (Doordarshan) during summer vacation, spooky crime stories, and nil physical activity.

I was especially behind in the line of chasing aesthetic physique or being fit because I didn't have exposure to western tv/pop culture. My mother believed that Cable TV would ruin our studies. I agree with her. My sister and I were leeches when it came to television. I referred to the western culture here because a lot of people drew inspiration from movies like Rambo and Rocky.

I did play a decent amount of Cricket with friends in school though, but I don't believe Cricket was even remotely connected to physical fitness until Virat Kohli happened to India. For us, it was mostly getting excited during batting and standing like a sloth for the rest of the time.

There were a couple of odd basketball games, but meh, Cricket was where the love was. Oddly enough, other than the world cup final in 2011, I haven't watched cricket since 2002. So that love story ended pretty soon.

There was also cycling, a lot of it, but it was neither treated as physical activity, nor it was suited enough to be called training. Cycling basically meant riding from point A to B, drenched in sweat in sun. But still, credit for any activity whatsoever must go to cycling. It kept me lean and moving for a few years.

Other than that, there was nothing. Maybe one or two feeble attempts to pull me up on the roof, but that was it.

And this was not just my story, every friend and cousin I had, and their friends, no one was aware of things that are to be done to stay physically fit.

It wasn't until the mid-20s that I realized - "Well, I need to move or I am going to die". I was lucky that I had the epiphany at 25 and I turned things around for good.

Now think about this for a moment. Till 25 years of age, I would have interacted with 100s of people regularly, but not 1 person was aware enough to preach the importance of being physically fit. I went through primary, secondary, senior secondary, and professional education, with physical education as a subject at different levels without ever learning about the importance of movement, getting the heart rate up, and sweating.

I believe this could not have been any different, given that the priorities of livelihood were much different even 10-20 years ago.

But the sad part is that the situation is not too different today either. Kids that I know or have met through friends and family, go to different kinds of sports coaching in top cities and some of the best schools, but none of them are being taught the right techniques from the ground up, the basics of strength and speed, with few exceptions. The focus is on satiating the parents and kids with quick rewards.

Society's perception is that you cannot fail at Physics or English but you can fail at fitness. That is also why 20-year-old guys studying in colleges look like someone in their 40s.

Physiotherapy for elders and patients is a whole another joke by itself and needs a whole another write-up.

Online coaches would argue that the situation has changed and many people are taking up fitness, but unfortunately, Social Media communities run on selection bias and hence give a feeling of a realm much different than the situation on the ground. The number of people who take up fitness has gone up drastically, but we are still way behind in integrating physical fitness into people's lives at the early stages. Despite this, the impact of Social media on creating awareness about physical fitness is unmatched.

A very basic example of how undervalued is physical fitness in our country would be the difference in the size and culture of running communities in India vs some of the developed countries. Since the mindset is not ingrained with putting in daily efforts towards staying physically fit from childhood, it becomes hard to pick it up as adults.

A simple comparison of our Olympic medal tally with other countries will also act as proof of how undervalued physical fitness is.

This undervaluation of physical fitness also leads to complete ignorance of nutrition. That is why we see everyone in our country starting their weight loss journey by eliminating random food groups or items like Roti and White Rice, which could lead to a temporary loss in weight, but everything comes back the moment they have a good vacation.

I wholeheartedly advocate the 80:20 diet:exercise rule for staying fit, but I also believe that in a country like ours, physical movement based mindset should be promoted over diet based mindset. Being in a caloric surplus is still a luxury in India, even for students and teenagers because the resources are limited, and people are not habituated to moving for the purpose of staying fit. So movement is going to prove a far more important lesson than lessons about eliminating food groups and calorie control.

But here is the fun part. All this is changing as we speak. One teenager, one adult, one kid, one coach at a time. Here is how -

• India is being predicted to see the biggest medal tally improvement in the next Olympics. And this is only going to get better from here. It is so because people have seen the prospect and success of being an athlete as a career.
• There has been an increase in the popularity and success of athletes beyond Cricket.
• Cricket has got a new face in the form of IPL increasing the chances of succeeding in the field drastically
• Social media is penetrating further every day as we speak
• There has been a massive growth in the consumption of content around fitness aimed at preventive healthcare in the last few years.
• The organic searches for equipment, food, nutrition, gyms, and other items related to fitness have more than doubled in the last 2-3 years.
• Parents, adults, and kids are becoming more competitive about their performance on the field, and they are going out of their way to get the best coaching

With all this growth and change in mindset, the growth of consumables i.e. food and supplements, sports shoes, activewear, athleisure, and accessories is bound to follow a similar growth path as well.

This the most exciting phase for the growth of the health, fitness, and wellness industry. If there was ever a time to build a business catering to fitness in India, it is now.