GOING BY THE BOOK WHEN I DITCHED MY GYM FOR A CENTURY-OLD TOME

What if the smartest thing you could do for your body was also the simplest? A century-old Calcutta training manual turned out to be the most radical workout I've ever done-and sent me down a rabbit hole like no other

- By Sharan Sanil

The first time I tried the old wrestler’s bridge press from Muscle Control and Barbell Exercise, I felt my neck tighten before the barbell even left the ground.

It was late evening at a Mumbai gym, fluorescent lights flickering, techno music bleeding out of someone's AirPods. I planted my feet, pushed my shoulders back, and tilted until only the soles of my feet and the back of my skull were touching the mat. The weight hovered above my chest. No bench. No machine. Just gravity, breath, and a few confused double takes from the guy doing cable flyes nearby.

It was a ridiculous thing to attempt for someone who once woke up in 2022 unable to turn his head. But the book had insisted that “you can easily find time for a little exercise, which is no less important than any other dire necessity of life,” and I wanted to see what that century-old certainty felt like.

The movement was slow and unforgiving. I could sense how easy it was to overdo it, to lose the balance between control and collapse. Each rep demanded patience, not just power. I stopped counting halfway through and focused on breathing evenly, keeping the strain where it belonged. When I finally racked the bar, my head throbbed, my neck buzzed, and for a moment I understood what the author meant when he wrote that the goal of exercise was not display but “the power of application of strength.”

No mirrors. No metrics. Just a quiet awareness that strength, before it became something we performed for others, was something we learned to live with.

The Lost Language Of Control

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