9 days till Asian Games 2023: What does it take in the gym to be Neeraj Chopra?

In the weight room, Neeraj Chopra does 100kg snatches and squats 200kg, more than twice his bodyweight, off-season. (File)

Remember that startling video of Neeraj Chopra apparently defying gravity? The one where he, with weighted medicine ball in hand, goes on the balls of his feet, drops his knee in front of him and arches back to such an extreme degree that his fingers almost touch the ground behind him, and then, without any other part of his body touching the ground except his toes, manages to unfurl himself from that position and fling the ball?

That video, which had surfaced just before Chopra made history at the Tokyo Olympics by becoming the first Indian to win an athletics medal and only the second Indian to win an individual gold, was the Haryana thrower's first brush with widespread fame.

Also read: Asian Games 2023: India's brightest medal prospects

It’s also not the kind of thing his coach, German biomechanics and throwing expert Dr Klaus Bartonietz, likes to see his ward perform. “It’s too much, you don’t need to be that extreme, you risk injury,” Bartonietz said.

Yet that video, Bartonietz agreed, points to one important thing—Chopra’s athleticism. “You have to be a great athlete first before you can be a great javelin thrower,” he said. “I always tell Neeraj that he could have been a great decathlete (a decathlon involves a 100m sprint, a long jump, a shot-put throw, a high jump, a 400 sprint, the 110m hurdles race, a discus throw, pole vault, a 1500m race, and the javelin throw).”

“He did not learn the hurdles when he was young, so he is not so good at that,” Bartonietz said.

You would not know by looking at him on the track.

Consider this session of hurdles and jumps on the track, where he does a fascinating set of workouts that target every plane of movement the hips and legs are capable of. Watch him explode as he does consecutive standing jumps over a series of hurdles.

Or his amazing single-leg bounding capabilities—the sheer power and distance he generates taking off just on one foot. Those single-leg bounds are not just about strength (though you require spades of that), but also the flexibility and stiffness of the ligaments and tendons in his ankles and knees, balance and coordination, and an extremely strong core that stabilizes the upper body.

“Neeraj is not the strongest, there are much stronger athletes, but it’s not about being the strongest, but combining speed and strength,” Bartonietz said.

That bit about not being the strongest needs to be put in some context—Bartonietz is comparing him to the elite field in a power sport like the javelin throw, where most men are freakishly large and strong. German thrower Johannes Vetter, who has the best distance among all active throwers in the world today, is 6 ft 1 inch and weighs 103kg. Chopra is 5ft 10 and weighs 86kg.

In the weight room, Chopra does 100kg snatches and squats 200kg, more than twice his bodyweight.

“That’s only on special days, when we want to train him to generate maximum power,” Bartonietz said. “It needs a lot of preparation. He can do more, but we don’t want to know his max lifting capacity. There is no need, and it comes with the risk of injury.”

The heavy lifting is usually reserved for off-season, when Chopra trains specifically to gain muscle and strength and to increase his power (the ability to generate maximum force in minimum time). The lifting programme is simple. The two gold-standard Olympic lifts of clean & jerk and snatch work every single muscle fibre in the body and need great technique and physical awareness. “How to fire your muscles in sequence, from the ground up,” said Bartonietz.

Clean & jerk and snatch maximize both power (both lifts have phases that require very fast movement of the bar) and strength. For pure strength, Chopra does squats, deadlifts, split squats and bench presses.

“One of the most important lifts he does which is specific to his sport is the overhead pullover while lying on the bench,” Bartonietz said.

The javelin throw is a highly technical event that requires supreme muscular coordination as well as power and strength, so Chopra’s workout plan looks a bit like an encyclopedia of exercises—from Olympic lifts to track work to gymnastic workouts, plyometric workouts and pilates, he does everything.

Imagine the complexity of the javelin throw: first the thrower has to run really fast to build up kinetic energy. Then he has to do something most unnatural: halt abruptly by braking with his front leg. This puts a great amount of force on that leg, up to 10 times the bodyweight of the thrower. Then, with full control, he has to rotate his trunk, transfer all the kinetic energy from the running and braking up the legs and the core and into the shoulders and make the throw, releasing the javelin at just the right time and angle.

The javelin throw is sometimes likened to a fast bowler’s action. This is incorrect. It is closer to a throw from the deep, if a cricket analogy is required, where the ball has to sail over the field and land in the keeper’s gloves. The usual distance from the boundary to the wicket is around 65m, and the weight of the ball is around 160 grams. Male javelin throwers are hurling an 800g implement, and getting a distance, at the elite level, that is consistently above 80m, often touching 90m.

“The body is a drawn bow, the javelin is the arrow,” Bartonietz said, “we bend the bow, and from this bent body, the upper body, shoulder, arm needs to coordinate and release itself and release the javelin…it is everything, all the muscles work, all the ligaments, you need flexibility, agility, a lot of flexibility in the shoulder joint, but also great stability…the shoulder is the bottleneck, everything is going through this tiny joint, so it needs to be very stable and very strong.”

This is the reason for Chopra’s encyclopaedic workout routine. He loves gymnastics, the best way to learn body awareness and build flexibility, agility and stability.

“That awareness and creativity that is involved in gymnastics training is what we call ‘movement intelligence’,” Bartonietz said, “and Neeraj is very good at that. It’s what makes him a great thrower.”

Which is the reason why you would sometimes see Chopra doing that crazy ball-throwing trick that this article opened with, or climbing ropes using only his hands, or doing walking handstands, or planchet push-ups, where his arms are extended all the way up to the front instead of to the side of the chest (needs great core and shoulder stability and strength).

But, at this time of the season, as Chopra goes through a whirlwind of competitions, from the World Championships to the Diamond League events and the Asian Games, the focus shifts to keeping his body primed with long warm-up routines to prime the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints; short workouts that involve a bit of everything—strength, power, agility, stability, flexibility—and lots and lots of rehab (physiotherapy) and sleep.