PKL 2019 | Strength and conditioning coach Sandesh Rangnekar brings new energy to Dabang Delhi KC

If we just go through each and every team in the seventh edition of the Pro Kabaddi League, we will find out that Dabang Delhi KC is a side which comprises a lot of players who are on the other side of their 30s. The three top defenders in the team - skipper Joginder Narwal, right corner Ravinder Pahal and cover defender Vishal Mane - are all from the older generation of the players in the league. Iranian all-rounder Meraj Sheykh is from the same age group as well and out of them the 37-year-old the skipper is the oldest. However, what makes it a good combination of youth and experience is the presence of players like Naveen Kumar who is only 19. 

“My whole work is not just management but also getting subtle improvement in performance based on their training, age and interacting with players and understanding them better and also team building. So I have been working on that since the past season now and that is what we want this season as well, so that's what we are trying to do with the team.”

Speaking about the specifications of the sport, Rangnekar explained the importance of respective positions and their relation to the fitness of the players. He talked about how he started educating players regarding their fitness and injury aspects to start with during the last edition of the league.  

“Kabaddi is a position-specific sport - we have got raiders, on the defence you have got cover position, you have got the second man and you have got corners so the whole focus first was to get them to understand what their role is with regards to the position and then build exercise and select exercises based on the positions specific to that. So you can’t train for example- during the early season, you can’t train Vishal Mane similar to Ravinder Pahal because their positions are different (he plays the cover and Pahal plays in the corner position) so the distances they cover during a single kabaddi match is pretty different. Ravinder has to come more towards the raider to hit him or block him as opposed to Mane so the training focus was to build exercise selection based on that," the fitness expert explained. 

For Rangnekar, who did his Masters in sports physical therapy from Manchester, physiotherapist is someone who is a “very reactive kind of guy” and that is the reason why he went into the strength and conditioning field which helps in getting the players ready and is something which is like a precautionary measures for the players not to get injured on the mat. He got associated with kabaddi first in the second edition of the league and has worked with other sportspersons as well. He is someone who feels that kabaddi chose him back in 2015 and stresses the importance of knowing the dynamics of the sport for professionals like him.

“It is very important for the fitness or strength and conditioning coach to know the dynamics of sport and especially if it’s a team sport in a variable position, so once you understand the position it becomes better for you to understand what kind of exercises you want to select in the offseason and early pre-season then pre-season and the end season, it only gets easier from there because for me I like to work in phases,” he stated.

At the start of the story, we had discussed the age of the players in the Delhi team and the age gap between their top raider Naveen and top defender Joginder is around 18 years. Rangnekar collected data from American football, Rugby, and Australian football to make plans for the players from various age groups. He stressed on the fact that the training for a 37-year-old Joginder will be always different as compared to the training for a youngster Naveen. 

“So there is something called as General Physical Preparedness, Specific Physical Preparedness and there is something called as Competitive Preparedness so Navin on that scale stands on General Physical Preparedness because he is young so he can So he can take that load in the weight room with regards to Joginder who has already played so much that is technically very sound so I need not trained him a lot in the weight room but I need to focus more on his recovery part which is why the SRP part where I ask these kinds of players how tired you are, so that it helps me keep them available for the matches . So if one day Joginder comes and tells me that he is tired it is time for me to pull him back from the  gym session and make him run for recovery because Joginder has now become so technically sound to bring any performance changes it is going to take me a lot of time as opposed to Naveen.”

When asked about his opinion on introducing protective gears in a sport like kabaddi, Rangnekar replied, “See how much protection can a protective gear give you is the question here. I may be opinionated here but for example in a sport live kabaddi there is no concussion awareness in sports like NFL and rugby the velocity is very high , in a sport like kabaddi when a raider is getting dashed out of the court the velocity is very less because the distance you are covering is very less going back to my previous statement it is not the speed it's the acceleration that matters  it's the first step that matters in kabaddi demand the higher reactive agility in team sport.

“Also what happens in regards to protective gears kabaddi for hands the only team sport in the world which is weight-sensitive. It requires you to be 85 kilos and under now the problem is even someone like Maninder Singh and Naveen Kumar are raiding a Maninder Singh would be able to take an impact as opposed to Naveen Kumar, the first thing that the coach needs is concussion awareness, on how to prevent concussion if the concussion ever happens at all. The second thing with protective gear when it comes to protective gear it cannot guarantee that there will be no injuries you can do your research on it  and it would be a fun area to explore but how much are the players receptive to protective gear party something that is unanswered as of yet.”

Apart from the kabaddi teams, Rangnekar was associated with wrestlers Geeta Phogat, Bajrang Punia and tennis players Sumit Nagal and Prajnesh Gunneswaran as well. Leaving aside the technical aspects of his job with the kabaddi players, the Dabang Delhi strength and conditioning coach also talked about the think tank of the players and the franchise owners and how those have changed in last five years or so.

“I started looking more into kabaddi and I got in touch with a lot of international coaches and started taking their opinion on how to train kabaddi players and what is the best way to get them prepared and available for the upcoming season because to be fair you only have four months in your hand to prepare these guys,” Rangnekar concluded.