Former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag opened up about Sachin Tendulkar’s dedication towards fitness, saying the Master Blaster was the fittest cricketer in their group.
Sehwag revealed that Tendulkar started focusing more on his fitness in the 2000s, and he even used to compete with his younger teammate Virat Kohli, as his former opening partner wanted to play for a longer time.
Well, it was his incredible fitness that helped Tendulkar score a plethora of runs and plenty of records with the bat. Virender Sehwag told YouTuber Ranveer Allahabadia on his channel 'Beer Biceps': “Why do you think Sachin Tendulkar was able to play for so many years? It's because each year he kept thinking what new can I add to my batting or I can become better.
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If I can't add in batting, I should maintain my fitness in such a way that I can convert 100s into 200s. When we came in 2000s, he would concentrate on fitness more than us. Later, in 2008 when Virat Kohli came in, Sachin would compete with him. He paid more attention to fitness than him.”
Speaking about Tendulkar’s weight training, Sehwag said: “I will tell you an incident. Once we were in a gym and there were dumbbells ranging from 1 kg to 20 kg. We had to pick up each and flex our wrists 10 times. After doing it for 5-6 times, I didn't have the strength but Sachin did it without stopping from 1 to 20 kgs and then back from 20 kg to 1 kg.”
He added, “It was an exercise for his forearms so he could lift his heavy bat and didn't tire. We couldn't go beyond 5kg. So just imagine. By then he had scored already 10-15,000 runs and scored some 70 centuries. Why did he need to do all this? Because he knew that if he could keep his body fit, he could play even longer. He was able to play till 40 because he was the fittest in our group.”
Sehwag also narrated a freak story about Tendulkar’s dedication towards his fitness. He signed off by saying, “I have not seen this but only heard that his house was on the 10th floor so he used to run up and down the stairs and used to do it 100 times a day. With that kind of running, the power he was able to generate in his legs would be unbelievable. He was playing since 1989. In 1999, he had a back problem; after that he began weight training a lot after which it never occurred to him.”
