India's all-rounder Hardik Pandya chose to focus solely on his fitness during a recent appearance, maintaining a stoic demeanor amidst the swirling issues that have surrounded him both on and off the field. Despite recent personal and professional setbacks, Pandya appeared upbeat as he launched his sports apparel brand, emphasizing the importance of physical endurance.
"When our body does not get tired, our mind gets tired. So, so many times in my life, the difference between when I was able to push my limits was always the fact that when my mind gets tired, I will tell my body to just push because you will always have extra effort in your body," Pandya said.
While his recent separation from Natasa Stankovic and missing out on the Indian T20 captaincy to Suryakumar Yadav were significant blows, Pandya remained undeterred, choosing to focus on fitness during his public appearance.
"Earlier this month, I celebrated with the T20 World Cup-winning team, and the love and support from fans were overwhelming," Pandya reflected on recent highs amidst personal challenges.
"The point that it is very, very important to sometime clean your mind as well, that your body has much more than what you can think and that video (he watched as a 16-year-old) stayed with me for so long that, every time in my life, when my trainer is telling me to do 10 push-ups, I've always ended up doing 15," the 30-year-old shared.
"And that has pushed my limits and I think slowly, everyone who wants to start with a fitness journey they should focus on that," said Pandya, adding that his highest score in the Yo-Yo test has been 21.7, only a few notches lesser than the upper limit.
"Start pushing your barrier every single day because the human body is such a lovely creation by god that it will mould however you want (it) to, however you want to have it, it's just that it just needs little hard work," Pandya said.
He may not be new coach Gautam Gambhir's choice for captaincy but he was once described as the "only player in the country to do what he can do" by chief selector Ajit Agarkar.
Pandya shared insights into what drives him.
"I never knew what fitness would do to me, but it's just that I felt it that for me I always wanted to be No. 1 in everything which I do, so in a habit of that, I kept training a lot when I was young, I pushed myself a lot, ran a lot so I had a very good strong base," he said.
"Obviously, there was not much knowledge about the body, not much knowledge about how to increase my fitness, but because my base was strong and I did the basics which you are supposed to do while training, it helped me when I came to the higher level."
"I used to bowl if I'm not wrong 130s; higher 130s, I was able to go 140 plus, 142 by pushing, that's when I realised by 2017 or not as soon as I started getting more more into my body, more knowledge about it and that's when I start pushing," he said.
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