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Writer's pictureManasi Nene

#04 - "It makes you feel like a goddess": On fitness, fun and community with Anupama Shivacharya

As one of India's First Certified Female Calisthenics Coaches, Anupama Shivacharya is passionate about helping people change lifestyles for the better. She has been featured on the Manchester City Football page for her work with calisthenics and as a footballer. Anupama has also collaborated with brands like Godrej Cinthol as a recreational surfer. In 2019, Anupama placed Runner Up in National Calisthenics Championship under the endurance category.



MM: Good morning Anupama! Welcome to my magazine. By day you’re a calisthenics (a form of bodyweight exercises) coach, but I also know you’re very involved in a lot of other sports - hiking, cycling, football, surfing, now skateboarding — what is the role of fitness and sports in your life? And what does it give you, why do you keep going back?


Image courtesy: Anupama Shivacharya

AS: So previously I had worked as a lifestyle journalist with Times of India, and this job would involve a lot of eating. We would eat out 4-5 times a week – and Bangalore is the brewery capital of India, so this would also involve a lot of drinking. In the process, my health started to go for a toss. I was seeing changes in my skin, the way I walk, everything. So that is the reason I picked up fitness – to take better care of my health.


And with regards to the sports (whether skateboarding or cycling or hiking) — these are the things that I never got an opportunity to do as a child. I studied in small towns across Karnataka, and this is just my way of keeping that inner child happy!


With regards to the sports (whether skateboarding or cycling or hiking) — these are the things that I never got an opportunity to do as a child... This is just my way of keeping that inner child happy!

MM: Can you speak more about your broader philosophy when it comes to fitness and training?


AS: So I believe that fitness is not an optional thing. If you don’t take care of yourself, your body is going to deteriorate. In fitness we call this atrophy.


Our body is always in survival mode, and it is looking to save as much energy as possible. A few thousand years ago, we were designed to hunt and gather – and if we didn’t get food, the body had to survive. So what the body does is – if I’m not using this bicep, it is going to reduce this bicep and keep it to the bare minimum. That process is called atrophy. And technology, and agriculture, and all those things have been a lot more recent, and evolution is a lot slower. So technology has outdone evolution, but we still evolve the same way. So we have to, have to strength-train to be fit, especially as we grow old.


Technology has outdone evolution, but we still evolve the same way. So we have to, have to strength-train to be fit, especially as we grow old.

But how we work out, that is up to us. It can be strength-training, it can be sport, even something as simple as a Zumba class - whatever works. So I tell people, don’t make fitness a task. It has to be as easy and simple as eating, going out, cleaning your house — it should be a part of your routine. Then whatever else you do on top of that, like a sport, that can be an added bonus, where you have a community, you have a sense of belonging, all those things. But at the core of it, fitness must be as sustainable as possible, so that we’re able to add it in our daily life.


MM: I’m assuming making it fun is a part of making it sustainable.


AS: Yes, exactly. Very few people really enjoy fitness, right, you’re not really going to enjoy pushups and burpees and all. So you have to make it enjoyable to make it natural, and that is the only way to make it a part of your lifestyle. You can’t be like, “I’m going to live in my house without cleaning it” – training should be just like that. It should be that much a part of your life. And that is my outlook towards fitness.


MM: And according to you, what is the right approach to food and nutrition?


AS: So my clients come with varied mindsets, right. Now I have a client who is a belly dancer, and who absolutely loves food. She cannot keep herself away from food, but she also wants to lose weight badly. So I told her, “you need to choose your priorities. You have to pick whether you want to lose weight, or you want to go all crazy about food”. If you want to lose weight, there is no other way to bring it down, except to have a little bit more discipline. But you don’t have to live that way, right.


You don’t have to live like an Olympic athlete because you’re not. So you can make peace with the fact that you enjoy food, and I will ensure that you’re healthy, that you stay pain free, that you’re able to go for your belly dancing classes, and you’re also able to eat.


Or, you come to me and you tell me that my goal is to only lose weight – I don’t care about anything else, my goal is only abs, visible abs. Then I will train you with that mindset. You’ll have to make peace with one of these things. So you choose your priority, you choose how you want to live. And I’ll train you accordingly.


You cannot live your entire life with visible abs. It’s a very hard thing to do. Personally I am past that stage where I’m like I need visible abs. For me, I just want to play some sports, I want to enjoy food, I want to be able to have a drink on the weekend with a friend. So that is the way I want to live. Now if you compare that to, say, an Olympic swimmer, that is not the way they want to live, they want to win in that particular sport. So they have these disciplines in place.


Personally I am past that stage where I’m like I need visible abs. For me, I just want to play some sports, I want to enjoy food, I want to be able to have a drink on the weekend with a friend. So that is the way I want to live.

MM: You did engineering in college, right? How did you make your way from engineering to journalist to fitness trainer?


AS: At that point, I was not very clear about what I wanted to do, and I could not put my foot down and say this is exactly what I want to do with life. Our parents are looking out for us at the end of the day, right, so my parents were like, engineering is our safest bet, and we’ve lived much longer than you, so you’re going to do this.


So that’s the reason I did engineering, but I used engineering as an opportunity to understand what I was good at. If it was not meant to be my career for life, I just tried to figure out what I could do. Even though I was good at sports, engineering was the first time I could actually play a sport and take it to the level where I represented the university (in volleyball).


Sport was one thing, and second was my ability to write. And my fondness for food. So I was like, okay, what is the best I can do, given that I’ve figured this out? Food and writing seemed to go hand in hand, I was like, okay, maybe I can make a career out of this.


I used engineering as an opportunity to understand what I was good at. If it was not meant to be my career for life, I just tried to figure out what I could do... Sport was one thing, and second was my ability to write. And my fondness for food. So I was like, okay, what is the best I can do, given that I’ve figured this out?

So the first thing that came up was food blogging. But every Tom, Dick and Harry was a food blogger, even back then. It was very saturated, and nobody would take a food blogger seriously. If I wanted to be taken seriously as a food writer, I needed to go work in a publication, or a company. And at that time, FreshMenu was hiring — it’s a cloud kitchen delivery service. So I joined as a content writer, and I wrote about food. This also gave me an opportunity to do research about cuisines around the world, and whatever knowledge I had, I could build it to the next level. And then I joined Times of India, that’s how I got into journalism.


No publication wanted to do just food, they wanted to do lifestyle which included everything else like art, fitness, travel, beauty – everything. Even though that was not my forte, or something that I was very knowledgeable about, I got to learn on the job. And it became a fun thing. I was very very happy at Times of India, it was my dream job and even till this date that will remain my dream job.


But what happened was, I got into fitness, and then everybody in my network (and my network included journalists, and engineers, and so many people it was a very wide network), everyone kept asking me hey can you teach us this, can you teach us how to do a handstand, can you teach us how to do a workout, and I didn’t have certification or anything. So I was like, let me pick that up as a side hustle, but then Covid happened, and health became the primary focus point during that time.


Everyone wanted to focus on health. Fair enough, right? And also at that time, everything that was fun and lifestyle-related shut down, because we couldn’t go out. There were no bars, there was no fitness, we couldn’t go to a gym, we couldn’t go to hike, nothing, absolutely nothing. Even before I left Times of India, people were pinging me — I left Times on July 31st, and by August 1st I had 6-7 clients. It was just the timing of the whole thing. And the world also took a little bit of time to get back to normal.


And this I found was a lot more personally satisfying and also financially lucrative, it’s 3x or 4x what journalism is. So I was like, you know what, I also am in this place where I need to get my finances in order. Writing about food and travel and fitness is something that I can pick up anytime, that is never going to go away. I felt like this was maybe my place in the world. Maybe I was not meant to be in the world through food, but through fitness. So that’s why I picked up fitness.



MM: You’re one of a handful of people who have really managed to use social media, and brand sponsorships and all that, to a really good extent, even though calisthenics is still a niche thing. And you’ve been really creative in opening doors for yourself without a business background. So from a professional point of view, what would you say to the girls who are a little bit younger, who are also trying to make careers in other niche things like skateboarding, b-girling, parkour, et cetera?


AS: So I think there are two approaches, for anyone who wants to earn a full-time income through something like this. Either it’s a premium thing, and you price it high enough that you make enough income, or you have to make it cheap accessible to everybody. Those are the two ways to earn.


One way I made calisthenics premium is, for people who have injuries, or who cannot afford time – they only have that 1 hour slot, and it’s 6.30 in the morning. Or 9pm in the evening. They’re willing to pay, and these are premium clients.


And then there are group classes, where I charge a minimum amount that needs to be charged, but make it accessible to everybody. So those are two ways you can take any passion and turn it into an income.


With the example of parkour — a parkour girl would have to figure out a way to make sure that even a 45 year old lady is not afraid to try parkour, and she has to make it sound doable, to earn. Or she can have some premium clients, like movie actors.

So they have to think out of the box.


And you have to be great at social media, which you have to be in today’s age. It’s a mandatory thing, video editing and social media and content creation, these are things that you need to learn, and then as an individual also you can earn from brand sponsorships. But that’s not a very sustainable thing, it’s more like a bonus.


MM: I remember when you spoke about surfing, one of the phrases that you used was that it made you feel like a goddess. Can you speak a little more about that feeling, and how physical activity takes you there?


AS: So most people experience this flow state when they do something that they’re passionate about. It could be anything — it could be work, or skateboarding, or drawing or art, or for you beatboxing — it’s that flow state that has full focus and crazy amount of joy.


With surfing it is all of that for me, and also that feeling of what the hell is happening, how am I afloat on the water! You’re in the middle of the ocean, and it’s such a short-lived thing, maybe a maximum of 10 seconds of time on the board that you’re able to stand up. And those 10 seconds start and get over before you even understand. But the amount of joy that you felt, your body, your face, your hair is all wet, you’re zooming, there’s wind, the sun above you — it made me feel like oh my god, if I can do this I can do anything in the world.


One other time I’ve felt the same way is when I got my first pull-up, because that was such a difficult goal. As women, we never see ourselves attempting or thinking about it. Now it’s changed a lot, but back then when I started there were probably 4 or 5 women (that I knew) across the country who could do pull-ups. I saw this girl do like 21 in one go (and there are many women who have broken that also). When I saw her do that, I was just like, man if I could get one pull-up I think I’ll feel like I could do anything. I think that feeling of being unstoppable, it is a very important thing. That is what I felt, when I got into surfing as well.


MM: So while you were learning to do pull-ups, it must have been much easier with a community supporting you, right?


AS: Definitely. I think that joy of feeling unstoppable is tripled when you have a community backing you, when you have a company cheering you.


Image courtesy: Anupama Shivacharya

With the calisthenics bit, I started off with a community called Calisthenics Beast. It didn’t matter if there was somebody who could do 20 pull-ups, it didn’t matter if there was me who could do 0 pull-ups — the kind of push and the cheering and the backing that a community can provide is like, you have that sense of belonging.


So when I went from 0 to 20, or when I put myself in that position, 20 was a normal I had to achieve. Everyone was doing it. It didn’t matter if you couldn’t do it, everybody was doing it, so it becomes your normal. It might sound crazy to the outside world, but that is the normal. So you place yourself in a community where whatever is not normal to you, is normalised. Like, cycling 100 kilometres for instance — right now I can’t cycle more than 30. But if I want to cycle 100, I would put myself in a community that has a majority of people cycling 100. So it doesn’t feel like it is something unachievable — everybody has achieved it there. So that is what community does to you; it normalises what you think is unachievable. Apart from a sense of belonging and cheering and having some place where you can be, I think this is what community does.


You can learn more about Anupama's work and coaching opportunities through her Instagram page.


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