The sun is still high in the sky at 5.30 in the evening but the party has already begun and how. Crowds of people, dressed in tracks and T-shirts (many with The Quad logo on them) are milling to St Bedes School Ground, off Santhome Road, in high spirits, all set for The Quad’s sports day.
“We started with 90 odd people at a single centre. Today, we have grown to 700 people across four centres,” says co-founder Arvind Ashok, who along with Raj Ganpath, first began holding classes at the Bamboola Play School in RA Puram back in 2011. Holding this event is a way of bringing the entire Quad community together, he adds. “Most people end upknowing only the people in their batch; this is a great way of getting people to mingle,” he says.
The mingling has already begun in one corner, as a bunch of people participating in a fitness competition, have started prepping for it. Team strategy is being discussed over numerous cat-and-camels as people prepare themselves for an intimidating-looking circuit, the details of which are listed on a board. A line of pop coloured kettlebells await the participants as Ganpath strides about, explaining rules, regulations and penalties. And then the competition begins.
Not everyone is participating, however. There are some watching on the sidelines and cheering; others wandering around the ground partaking of coconut water, fresh fruit juices and whey-based desserts; clicking photographs at a photo booth; or trying out the different activities. There are stalls for plank reaches and crawls, shuttle runs and burpees (an ominously empty one), squats with slosh pipes and tug-of-war; in short, different ways to, “celebrate movement and fitness,” as Ganpath, puts it.
Something for everyone
Traditionally, The Quad’s sports day is a focussed competitive event, reminiscent of a school sports day. But over time, The Quad Squad realised something: although there were indeed many people who took the competition very seriously, there were also folks who wanted to have fun. This year’s sports day — with both a competitive and a fun section — was an attempt to address the needs of both these communities, adds Ganpath.
“Last year was all carnival. This year we sent out a mail asking people to register for either the carnival or competitive section,” he says, adding that they ended up with a considerable number of takers for both. “At the end of the day, we just want people to come in and enjoy fitness.”
The competitive section is finally over and the various coaches huddle around the scoresheets. The participants weave towards the food stalls or plonk themselves on the grass, exhausted after the intense forty-five minute circuit they have just completed. The coaches take to stage to announce what they call the Quad Ninjas, “people who have realised they need change and gone ahead in implementing it by being consistent, working hard and doing what needs to be done,” says Ashok.
Bashing on regardless
This year 10 such people have been selected across centres: Anand Rajan is one of them. Rajan, who has been working with The Quad from the time it started, “with breaks in between,” he says wryly, joined the boot camp to, “gain some muscle,” and get better at his game, Frisbee. He has worked his way up to, “squat my body-weight and dead-lift twice of it,” says Rajan, who persevered despite a setback three years ago when he fell very sick and lost nearly 11 kilograms of muscle. “I had to start from scratch.”
Equally inspiring is Deepika Shyam’s story. This is the second year that Shyam was a part of the team that won the fitness contest.
But this time, a year after she became a mother, victory is even sweeter. “I worked out all through my pregnancy, taking only the last two months off,” she says. And though her body did change because of it, she went back to The Quad, exactly six weeks after her delivery, as soon as she got a clearance from her doctor. It was hard, at first, “I couldn’t do what the rest of the class did,” she says. But she persevered, doing basic moves, slowly losing weight and regaining strength and endurance. “I got to understand my body much better,” she says.
