Fitness

Ajay Thomas’ first encounter with pickleball, a paddle sport played with a perforated plastic ball, happened a little over a year ago in Chennai, during a corporate team outing. Within a few minutes of playing the game, Ajay, an athlete during his early days, could rally with ease. Later, when he moved to Bengaluru, he became further acquainted with the sport while witnessing the growth of communities surrounding the sport. Soon, Ajay started Spinz Pickleball (Instagram handle: @spinz_pickleball), a space exclusively for the sport, with his schoolmates Sharath Varghese, Yadu Manoj and Lawrence Moraira, at Pongumoodu in Thiruvananthapuram, where the…

Participants at The Bhag Club voluntary run in Delhi | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Last Sunday, a large group of college students and young adults gathered at Chanakyapuri in Delhi and voluntarily put on their running shoes to run the perimeter of Nehru Park and test their stamina and energy levels. It was neither a competitive race nor was there any pressure on them. People joined for fun, to up their fitness levels or to meet and build a community of like-minded individuals who like to run.Leading them were two college friends, Krishbir Singh and Jyotiraditya Thakur, who founded The…

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, cutting calories and spending long hours in the gym, this thought must have occurred to you: “I wish there were a pill I could pop and take care of it.” Turns out that there may be a possibility, going by the host of GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus, that have flooded the market. What is also clear, however, is that while these drugs may be an effective tool for some people, old-school lifestyle choices, exercise, nutrition, stress management, and sleep cannot be ignored. A pharmacy owner shows an Ozempic antidiabetic medicine…

Basav Biradar says his new film, One Foot In Front Of The Other, which chronicles the journey of four runners who decide to run from Bengaluru to Chennai along the highway, is a political act. “There is a lot of individuality when people speak of ultra-running, including the loneliness of the long-distance runner and other clichés.” And yet, what struck him about the people featured in the film, Chandra Gopalan, Manikandan Seran, Krishan Dhall and Santhosh Padmanabhan, was that “they see it as a community activity.” Unlike traditional marathoners, who train with particular races and outcomes in mind, these four…