Back injuries, Mirabai Chanu & elite sports physio with Chandani Parsania

08/25/22 • 39 min

In 2018, after Mirabai Chanu won her first Commonwealth Games gold, a back injury threatened to end her career. In this episode, Mirabai's physiotherapist talks about how that problem was fixed, taking us on a fascinating journey through the world of high-performance physiotherapy, the highly scientific and data-driven approach to injury prevention and management, and the pressures and pleasures of trying to make the best athletes in the world even better. Parsania leads the physiotherapy department at the Inspire Institute of Sports in Bellary, Karnataka, and also works with Lovlina Borgohain, Mary Kom, and Vinesh Phogat among others.

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All about muscle, strength & power with coach Abhinav Manathanath

What is the process of building muscle? What's the difference between training for hypertrophy (increasing muscle size), strength, and power? How is it possible that you can have big muscles but not great strength? What role does the central nervous system (CNS) play in muscle building and how can you harness and train the CNS? How are strength, power or hypertrophy training programs made for elite athletes? Coach Abhinav is the strength & conditioning expert at Inspire Institute of Sports in Bellary, and works with India's finest boxers and wrestlers, from Bajrang Punia to Amit Panghal, and worked with Neeraj Chopra ahead of the Tokyo Olympics to return him to full fitness after a surgery to the throwing arm. He shares his deep insight into all things MUSCLE in this episode!

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Standing still, or the shooter episode with Dr Digpal Ranawat

It's not just his Olympic gold. Abhinav Bindra has been a pioneer when it comes to sports science in India as well. He is the first of our athletes who immersed himself in the best practices followed globally and who advocated for it tirelessly. It eventually resulted in the Abhinav Bindra Targeting Performance or ABTP centres that are spread across India, equipped with the finest technology and knowhow when it comes to sports science. On this episode, the director of ABTP, who was also Bindra's personal physio during his shooting days, speaks about the importance of training and recovery in shooting and the kind of stress that the body goes through trying to hold an unnatural posture with complete stiffness for hours. You thought standing still was easy?