At 23, Sanjana George, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology, decided she won’t do anything mainstream. “I am aiming to pursue a Master’s in Sports Psychology, but before that I wanted time to figure out what I wanted to do. Since I’ve always wanted to train to be an athlete, I took the initiative to figure out what form of fitness I like.”
Sanjana, who is now a functional trainer as well as a professional MMA athlete started working at Hyderabad F45, which she says she used as a platform to learn new things everyday. She did her functional training certification and a NESTA personal trainer certification so she could be qualified to train. Currently, she is a personal trainer and also offers group classes at F45 training Indiranagar.
“Being an athlete isn’t easy at all. Your social circle gets smaller and smaller. There are so many sacrifices to make. You need to accept the fact that you will be different from the rest. You need to maintain discipline — eating right, sleeping right, ensuring good intake of water, and training correctly.Though this is full-time, no matter how tired or sore your body is, making the effort to wake up early every morning to ensure you are on time for work and energise yourself to keep your clients motivated, is perhaps the hardest part. But I wouldn’t wish to have it any other way.”
Being a woman as young as her and in a field as rigorous as this, has its fair share of challenges. “Most people have a preconceived notion about ‘gym trainers’. They think trainers are not educated. Society doesn’t accept training as a proper job. They think anyone with a good body can become a trainer which is not true. In fact, it takes a lot of education to become a trainer. Besides that, being a woman in this industry is not easy. People think we aren’t strong enough and often male clients don’t want to be trained by a woman. But there’s nothing quite like waking up everyday to challenges like this and proving the world wrong.”
Overcoming hurdles
Sanjana’s love for OCR (obstacle course races) saw her take part in Devils Circuit (India’s first and biggest obstacle running series) in Hyderabad in 2016. She went on to participate in the Legends Cup of Devils Circuit over the past few months, and in eight different cities, which she eventually won. “Every race was challenging and being able to conquer the warped wall was my biggest pride,” she says.
Right after her win, Sanjana hosted a contest via her Instagram account where she announced her “pay it forward” initiative. Having always wanted somebody to mentor her so she could excel at what she was good at, on winning the Legend’s Cup, she decided she would like to mentor one woman for OCRs like this, over a period of three months, at no charge whatsoever. The contest involved interested women sending her an email stating why they think they deserve the opportunity. After short-listing the best answers, there was a lucky draw, and now Sanjana is looking forward to train an OCR aspirant. That apart, Sanjana says, “I want to continue as an MMA athlete and probably take part in the world championship this year. I will continue to participate as an OCR athlete in the Wild Warrior Race.” Clearly, there really is no stopping this girl!
(This column profiles those who choose to veer off the beaten track)
