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In the high-stakes world of Indian domestic cricket, where physical prowess meets mental resilience, Vishal Chitrakar stands as a pivotal figure behind the scenes. Serving as the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team, Chitrakar has been instrumental in sculpting athletes who not only endure the gruelling demands of the game but excel in them. His journey from being an ex-cricketer to a mentor underscores a profound understanding of the sport’s intricacies, enabling him to tailor training regimes that resonate with the unique needs of each player.
Under his guidance, the Mumbai team achieved a commendable runner-up position in the 2022 Ranji Trophy season, a testament to the efficacy of his holistic training approach. Chitrakar emphasizes long-term fitness planning over short-term gains, focusing on comprehensive season strategies that encompass both physical conditioning and mental fortitude. His methodologies extend beyond traditional training, incorporating off-field activities aimed at enhancing overall well-being, thereby fostering a resilient and cohesive team environment.
In this exclusive interview, we delve into Chitrakar’s philosophy, exploring how his blend of experience, innovation, and dedication continues to elevate Mumbai cricket. His insights offer a window into the meticulous preparation that underpins the team’s performance, shedding light on the often-overlooked aspects of athletic excellence.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
Q. How would you explain Strength and conditioning to a layperson?
Chitrakar: Yeah okay, so let’s take it very simple in let’s take it in a very simple terms strength and conditioning. If you see the athletic performance there are three aspects to it or two aspects as we have said strength and conditioning and the third aspect can be your skills. So, what supports your skills to do better is covered in the next two parts that is strength and conditioning.
So, strength is basically, again in the fitness part that we say when we say fitness it is broken into these two parts. It is strength and conditioning, strength means your ability to actually apply a force behind a particular body or while doing an activity. So, when a player he becomes more stronger he’s able to produce that more force while he’s playing So definitely that again benefits the skills in a certain way and conditioning is basically his ability to keep producing that force again and again produce how much repeatedly he can keep producing that much force. So, that comes under conditioning so when we say fitness, strength and conditioning entails all and how can a player keep producing the force again and again and how larger force he can produce. So, it entails strength and a fitness in those terms.
Q. How was your journey from an S&C coach like?
Chitrakar: Looking back at my journey throughout how it has transformed in these years is that I always used to play as a batsman and wicket keeper in the team and being a wicket keeper required me to stay fit to certain extent in which I can move better I can probably execute my skills better and that made me more into towards doing all my fitness has drills fitness stuff all there and around a certain age like around 25-26, like around 2016 stuff I understood that I had to make a certain transition in my career in order to keep my finances also going at that time. So that made me a transition into a fitness as a career and throughout the journey which I started with SNC it just opened up different portals for me to understand the game in different perspective because I had been just thinking about it as a player. So, for so many years suddenly it got me thinking about the game in a different way and it opened a whole new perspective to me. So, all in all this journey as a SNC coach has been quite fulfilling so far and also one of transformation for me if you look at it. So that’s how I sum up my journey so far in SNC like it started off with us the need of a certain switch in career due to looking at the finances at that time but overall it has been a fruitful journey so far.
Q. How do you blend strength training with yogic principles?
Chitrakar: Coming to the core of it as I said that strength and conditioning it entails, looking at the performance aspect of your skill. So, when I started with strength and conditioning what I understood one was that players training, but what actually drives the performance was the involvement of the player to do that session or to do that program. What drives involvement? Because players when they are playing the matches they are in the season, it is about different stuff that is going on in their mind whether they will get to play the next match if they are playing, then if their performance is not up to the mark or so, is their place secure in the team? If someone is performing then their ability to keep maintaining the current performance that is going through.
I understood that one thing that strength and conditioning needs to have that one driving force also that one base from which the player involvement can come in more, plus even as a player I used to be very drawn towards breath work, meditation or visualization because I remember when I was under 19 or under 23 around that time, I had received a wonderful visualization CD from one of my coaches I played it in my computer at that time and it suddenly like resonated with me like, I wanted something of that sort like I am thinking something but is it right or not I was not sure of it. So, once I started to hear that more and more. I started to see that difference in my game in terms of confidence.
So I started to dig deep into the concepts of yoga I completed my certification in yoga from a university and also completed my ICB level two, which is government certification during the covid times Why do I mention this is because courses like this helped me to dig deep into the yogic concepts which spoke more about how your mental states affect your performance Yeah, possibly the driving force behind the western psychology that we say it is a very huge yoga has also got a huge base in terms of how psychology impacts everything that we do in day-to-day life and we always say for the players you have to increase your concentration, you have to increase your consistency you have to increase your awareness. Yeah, But the question is how?
So to answer the how I had to dig deep to make sense of whatever I had to say and that gave me the different results when I use those concepts with my SNC and there have been research papers even in strength and conditioning which show direct performance gains when there’s a clear connection between the mind and body mind and muscle connect that we say when your mind is able to focus on the muscle being trained the performance results were that were obtained were far superior than just the mind is somewhere else and you are doing a particular muscle group exercise. So, when your mind and body are connected the performance gains definitely go up, so I could find that resonance within the concepts as well The strength and conditioning concepts and the yogic concepts they might look different, They might look low intensity and high intensity but if you look at the driving force at the base they both are connected and gradually evolve into the higher intensity because anything you have to start with the first gear gradually go to a second and third fourth So the base at the first gear should be very critical and the foundation should be as large as possible and as stable as possible. So, I could find that from yoga and build performance using the strength and conditioning.
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Q. How do you see the leadership traits Ajinkya Rahane and Shreyas Iyer possess?
Chitrakar: I will just put my observations and learning because, okay each of them bring their own character to the table and both have been magnificent the way they have led because both of them have led the team to trophies, in whichever tournament they have led in with Ajinkya Rahane we had Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Irani trophy, with Shreyas Iyer we had the Syed Mushtaq Ali this year probably this was the only season he played throughout my tenure. So, as I said with Shreyas it is more of that flamboyance that clarity, whatever team you have or whatever facilities you have try to make most out of it, it has been the mantra I feel that whenever he takes up the leadership cap on him.
One thing is that I have like liked about his style is that probably what he has been able to influence the team is that thinking in terms of energy as well like I remember one instance where he was in the team meeting and he had just mentioned about how to think also in a way. So, in the team meeting whenever I think we were playing against one of the top teams. So, the clear message by him was okay, there might be a star player in that team or that might be a good player in that team no one gives energy to his performance because the moment you’re giving energy to his performance you’re also helping him perform rather focus on your own energies focus on your own performance and that’s what’s the only thing that is going to bring the best out of you and the results are there to see, we won the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy as well so struck to me that all these elite players are also thinking in terms of energy again
And speaking of Ajinkya it has been like, a journey of understanding what calmness can bring you. I have known Ajinkya since school days because we played together during our school time and then his cricket graduated to a different whole new different level and always we have been looking up at him as a player as a leader leadership material and with the calmness that he executes on the ground, he just brings that to the team the way he handles the team. Everyone respects him in that sense because to handle a team like Mumbai which is full of stalwarts you need to have a leader who is equally respected and someone whom you can actually look at and follow and that respect that calmness that attitude Ajinkya brings to the team so it’s a flamboyance in a different way is what I field a lot. He’s someone who is like very particular about everything that he does like his training his recovery strategies his food. So, what happens is that players when they see their leader doing a certain things they but naturally follow him. Yeah, so they don’t need a second telling so that actually eases even my job as a SNC coach because the players are seeing the leader themselves do the stuff right so automatically everyone starts to fall in the line and everyone is geared towards performance because everyone knows what is expect but the discipline is what makes the real difference like everyone knows any team if you take in India.
