Having explored swimming, table tennis, and cricket, the sports enthusiast was in for a new challenge, and decided to pick what could arguably be among the toughest of the lot — track and field. “I found a need for speed in my life. I’ve trained for 25 years, but I wanted to put my body through the discomfort that comes with this sport. I always found myself better at endurance exercises, but practicing that alone would lead me to a plateau. With speed work, you gain muscle mass and bring about change in your body. It demands explosive training, so we switched to practising plyometric exercises and focused on strength work that would enhance my speed, like working on the muscles of the lower body and lower back. We did exercises like single-leg squats, deep-squats and isolation workouts,” says the actor, who, since expressing his desire to compete to trainer Brinston Miranda, shaved his 400-metre record from two minutes 15 seconds, to 66 seconds. 

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“Brinston never told me my time while training. I only knew of it on race-day. He’d make me run at 60 per cent [of my max heart rate], slowly working me up to 100 per cent. For me, it was the mental struggle that was the toughest to overcome — having the belief that this was possible. On certain days, my body would respond well but I was mentally fatigued, on other days, it was the other way around. I had to learn to run with spikes, and also do so at noon, when the temperature was 40 degrees. What makes it worth it is that sprinting for me is my religion. When I am on the field, I feel like I’m [praying] to the almighty. You can be unfit at 20, or fabulous at 40, 50, or 60. What you do with your body is up to you.”

66
Seconds Bedi took to run 400 metres