EXCLUSIVE | Celebrity trainer and MMA player Rohit Nair: 'Akshay Kumar has a sustainable body, he has worked...'

Rohit Nair is a celebrated celebrity fitness coach and Indian athlete. He is currently training actors such as Ali Fazal, Mrunal Thakur, Pooja Hegde, Pratik Babbar, and Rasika Dugal, and has previously trained Varun Dhawan, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Tara Sutaria, and Adar Jain.

Rohit is a MMA player, kickboxer, jujitsu trainer who was voted the most popular fighter in the Fight Campaign in Thailand and also represented India in the 2016 Asian Beach Games in Vietnam.

In the entrainment work space, he has currently trained Ali Fazal to achieve a bulky and chiselled look for the upcoming season of Mirzapur and Siddhant Chaturvedi for the action sequences in his upcoming movie Yudra.

In an exclusive interview, the man opened up about his journey and a lot more.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

I want to start by asking you about your journey as a MMA player and kickboxing. When was the first time you realized that you want to be a part of this field?

So I started I’ve already been into combat sports. I started doing with boxing. Then even since I did kickboxing then turned into anime. And I have been part of the building Asian beach games for, like, Sambo games, and I played world championships in MMA in 2017. So I just went with the flow. I wanted to be just an athlete, but I was pretty average in curriculums as well.

And how did your journey in the entertainment industry begin?

So when I started, training MMA in the gym, like, in commercial gym, and there were not a lot of people used to train what I used to do. Then I started getting inquiries from the gym itself. I think Pratik Bhaduri was one of the first celebrities targeting with me for MMA. And now in the age of social media, you get to share your work with everyone on, no, this platform. Like, that you try and, like, reach more people.

What what are some of the myths about fitness or bodybuilding or building muscles you would like to address that people?

Fitness, like, limits, I would like to say, there are a lot of, like advices or information out there on social media, like, pretty detailed, like, advice and everything. We just have to focus on basics. And basics, is, I would like to say, just complete your protein intake, eat in proper calorie deficit if you want to loose weight or if you want to gain weight, eat in calories or plus. And just go to the gym, like, thrice a week. Like, that’s the best minimum you can do. And everything else will fall in place rather than, you know, just focusing on a lot of detail which is shared by everyone.

We can focus on the basics and improve. I also want to ask you, ever since social media has come in, people have become so active on social media. They share their fitness tips.

Is it enough if we actually see the video and decide to work it on our own, or do you feel we need somebody who can guide us?

You have to like, this time, actually, first person is already an athlete. It’s been working out in quite some time. Then can judge the video and judge if that work all good for them or no. But I feel as if the person is starting and, you know, for starting a fitness journey or either he has an injury or somebody with a background, it’s always better if there’s someone to guide them. Also, this video on Instagram is I feel not to be followed. Everyone is there just to get into the trend.

Who according to you, has the best body in the industry? Right now or otherwise, if you can take any name?

I think Akshay Kumar has a sustainable kind of body right now, and everyone has a good body. But what I would like to say is that he had worked for it with good habits, and his body kind of looks like maintainable throughout the year. So I feel if you want to follow someone, you could follow him then.

Working as an Entertainment journalist for over five years, covering stories, reporting, and interviewing various film personalities of the film industry see more