CHENNAI: One fine morning earlier this year, Chris Pedra got a message on his phone. It was from an unknown number. The sender was Saina Nehwal. Pedra, a sports physio who had treated shuttlers before, knew who Nehwal was at the time but he didn’t know the sender was the ‘Nehwal’. The crux of the message was five words. “I need to see you.”
That was the beginning of Nehwal’s second wind, the moment she decided to change everything she knew and was doing before and after her matches. The rankings show that Nehwal was World No 10 on January 4, 2018. The 28- year-old is now World No 9. That, however, tells only half the story behind her remarkable post-2016 renaissance.
Pedra explains. “When she came to me, she was picking up strains and niggles.” The underlying issue was that Nehwal while being fit, wasn’t fit in a ‘badminton specific way’. She used to do lots of general training, general cardio and workout routines. Pedra’s new programme tore up her old training regimen.
“What we basically did was start asking her to do fitness exercises centred around badminton... specific routines revolving around jumping, balance and change of direction.” During the assessment period, Pedra had noticed that Nehwal had made a few missteps while recovering from a right knee surgery after the 2016 Olympics.
“She had to sort of fill in a couple of blanks during rehab after that Olympics."
“We felt that she had sort of failed to fill a few of those blanks... she skipped those steps.” Pedra, in fact, felt that Nehwal ‘rushed back a little bit’. The baby steps in training revolved around the Haryana shuttler unlearning what she had known about training sessions.
The results are there for all to see. This is the first time since 2015 that she has figured in three finals (Indonesia Masters, Commonwealth Games and Denmark Open). Her inherent fighting quality and the motivation to be the best are some of the reasons behind her longevity in a sport increasingly dominated by young players, whose first port of call is to increase the pace of the game till the opponent taps out.
The ages of the top 10 women’s singles players currently paints a picture as to the staying powers of the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist — Tai Tzu Ying (24), Akane Yamaguchi (21), PV Sindhu (23), Chen Yufei (20), Carolina Marin (25), Nozomi Okuhara (23), He Bingjiao (21), Ratchanok Intanon (23) and Sung Ji Hyun (27). Nehwal has outlasted her generation as well as the previous one — Wang Yihan (30), Wang Xin (32) Juliane Schenk (35), Tine Baun (39), Cheng Shao-Chieh (32) and Li Xuerui (27) — and is now tackling the next generation of superstars.
She is the oldest in the top 10 but is more than holding her own against most of them. The mileage in those legs of hers is at least 3000 km (total of 578 singles matches over a 10 year period) but armed with a completely new methodology, she is fitter than ever before. It’s for these reasons that Parupalli Kashyap, a court-side observer recently, said last week that Nehwal could continue for another six years.
Those sentiments were echoed by both Pedra and national team coach Pullela Gopichand. “She is somebody who is highly motivated and aspires to do even better,” Gopichand told Express. “She is somebody who can play for a few more years beyond 2020.” Pedra went one step further. “She still has a lot left in the tank... if she can remain injury-free, why not? She can stay at the very top till 2024.”
Gopichand also gave credit to the work done by Pedra.
“I think she has been working with a team of physios (Arvind, Kiran and Subhansh) at the academy. She was also working on a programme with Heath (Heath Matthews, a specialist in sports science) and Chris. The strength aspect in that period of time was being taken care of by Chris.” What she does in the lead up to the 2020 Games will reveal whether the prophecies of Kashyap, Gopichand and Pedra will come true.
Swaroop@newindianexpress.com