Is Tiger Shroff’s workout for you?

If you like dance, functional fitness, combat, all rolled into one, then yes

May 21, 2018 11:29 am | Updated 11:29 am IST

Tiger Shroff’s workout can be summed up in a word: youthful. Prowl really shouldn’t be done in a brightly-lit gym; its place is in a dark, night-club-style zone, with neon accents.

There are dance, functional fitness and combat moves in the hour-long HIIT workout. So if your idea of cardio, unlike mine, is to leap from one fast-paced exercise to another, allowing the house music to take you over, all the while making group shrieking sounds, you’ll love it.

Now, this doesn’t mean it’s only for the young. The class I went for, at Cult.Fit (exclusive to it), had a man who was in his late 50s, and he seemed more at ease with doing it than I was. It’s what happens when you spend most of your youth focussed on books and boys and then suddenly realise at 35 that if you don’t exercise you’ll probably get diabetes.

Prowl is polarising: you will either love it, and be determined to master every move and so return multiple times, or simply slink away, feeling rather ashamed that you didn’t enjoy the ‘fun challenge’ of holding a plank for one minute at the end of a bunch of rigorous movement.

Gym classes are social affairs: you can get through them riding on the energy of the trainer and your fellow participants. And Shwetambari Shetty is a trainer who brings the sort of vigour to the workout that only someone so experienced and committed can. The workout is meant “to celebrate the joy of movement. Our body is designed to move, walk, run, dance, and the one thing we deprive the body of is movement,” she says, in her get-up-and-go manner.

Karnataka : Bengaluru : 13-05-2015 - Zumba fitness instructor Shwetambari Shetty interacting with The Hindu Metro Plus in Bengaluru on  May 13, 2015. 
Photo : Sudhakara Jain

Karnataka : Bengaluru : 13-05-2015 - Zumba fitness instructor Shwetambari Shetty interacting with The Hindu Metro Plus in Bengaluru on May 13, 2015. Photo : Sudhakara Jain

The shame of 10-hour sitting sessions between office and driving kicks in. “We wanted to create a workout that brings together some key elements of fitness with great music. Everyone loves music, everyone loves dancing, a lot of them enjoy combat, and functional fitness is of course the need of the hour,” she says. She’s right, of course, though my mind, prone to escapism, instantly sees my body lounging by a beach (it debates whether to put a mimosa or margarita in the hand), rather than punching the air in a combat position, to music.

So if you let go of the uptight-ness (I didn’t), hone the skill (I couldn’t) by practising like you would guitar or piano, it’s then that the workout will let you enjoy its rhythm.

It’s divided into blocks, with each giving you a little time to learn the moves before you take the plunge.

“Skill teaching is an integral part of the programme. We believe that these skills, especially combat, are important for everyone; it’s a good take-away from every class and breaking it down allows the members to do better in the blocks and hence be more productive,” says Shetty. It may also give you a glimpse into a pure-combat class, in case you want to go down that road.

The workout was developed by Cult, and Shroff gave a lot of feedback on how he wanted the format to look and feel. Xavana Dias, with her team, Naveen Krishnaswamy, Mazhar Hussain and Greig D Costa, developed it from scratch.

So what should you expect from the class? An HIIT workout set to music that’ll help you burn anywhere from 450-800 calories (yes, we counted). And that’s a lot.

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