“I started with fat burn (last November),” he said. “Monday to Saturday, I worked very hard and stopped junk food. I started counting calories, how much fat I was burning. I got very nerdy about it. Oatmeals and eggs for breakfast, chicken, green and rice for lunch and a chicken salad and milk before sleeping. He had one cheat meal per week.”
Diet, though, is just one part. “My workout routines mainly focused on the lower body and stomach because in hockey, you need that part to be strong. You can push yourself more, you get more strength and you can turn easily.”
The fruits of his labour was beginning to show at the Hockey India League in January. “I felt it during HIL. I wasn’t feeling fatigued and I was quick and the body was recovering well.”
By the time he reported for national duties in February, there was a clear physical transformation. Members of the Indian team formed a queue to tell him ‘budha hogaya hai, kya karna chahta hai? (you are old now, what are you trying to do?)’.
He had achieved what he had set out do. When he weighed himself on the scale sometime in February, he was 67kg. “It’s good to see myself in the mirror,” he laughs. “The muscles are showing.” Like most athletes, he felt good about the physical transformation and put it up on Insta for the world to see. “Before I put it up, I had to take my wife’s permission,” he laughed. “She was like ‘karna kya chahta hai ‘what do you want to do?’ But she knows my first preference is hockey.”
Mentally also he’s at peace because his game is on point. “I feel quick across the turf,” he said. “In our speed test, my results are better than last time. I don’t know if I can reveal the scores but it was very good. I feel I can push harder than before.”
Pretty soon, Manpreet’s attention will turn towards the World Cup qualifier. His trophy cabinet has a medal in every global event he has featured in save the World Cup. “It’s an extra motivation,” he said. “If we want to compete at that level, we have to be fit. If we are fit, we can compete even with 10 players.”
Like they did at the Olympics.
