Ms. Namita Nayyar:
You are a proud recipient of the Arjuna Award. No doubt this is a matter of great honour to be invested upon with such an individual. When were you informed and what was your first reaction? Do share your family’s reaction too?
Ms. Heena Sidhu:
I got the Arjuna award in 2014. The feeling that I felt after knowing that I have been selected for it was great, my family was very happy. I had waited long enough for it, my family came to see the function, my grandparents came. The most fun thing was that the Arjuna award was given on the sports day which was 29th of August, which is also my birthday, so it was really great. So afterwards we went to a really good restaurant in Delhi and had a great party, so I will always remember it. Getting the Arjuna award was a great achievement since it meant that the government and the people of this country recognize you for the medals you have got for the country. So it was a very satisfying feeling to receive the award.
Ms. Namita Nayyar:
Winning in any sport involves a lot of determination and hard work, more so in the life of a sportswoman. What exercises comprise your fitness regime when you are preparing for competition? Elaborate on your training to achieve focus which is a must in your sport?
Ms. Heena Sidhu:
Winning in any sport involves a lot of dedication, hard work and sweating so shooting is no different. People sometimes think that shooting is a sport where you just have to stand and aim, so there shouldn’t be any fitness required. But if you have ever seen a shooter, the posture that we stand in, for hours, is a very unusual posture. Human body is designed to move, to run, it’s not really designed to stand still that you can shoot at such a small target. For that the exercise that a shooter does are very different from an athlete.
As a pistol shooter, it is very important to have very disciplined muscles that are trained to have the tone but also stay very still. At 10 or 25 metres, one movement from your side can land your shot in a 7 or 8 on 10 which is a disaster. So we really have to take care that the muscles are supple, they can maintain the tone and they can hold the posture comfortably and also you have to make sure that they are injury prone. Shooting is a sport where athletes have long careers, so even if you don’t see an injury on the first day, you will see a lot of changes that will appear over the years. Our core needs to be extremely strong. The stability in a shooter has to begin from the feet. The ankle, the knees, the pelvis, the core, the back, the shoulders, the neck, the elbows and the wrist is very important. All these joints have stabilizing muscles, which a physiotherapist or trainer would target while training a shooter. These muscles stabilize how we hold and aim. So the exercises that we do have very controlled movement. Even in the gym, we have a very good neuro-muscular co-ordination with fine movements. A lot of physiotherapists enjoy training shooters because there’s a lot of mental work required on their part to understand the shooter’s intricate movements, which you don’t find in any other sports, so it’s a nice challenge for them.
Ms. Namita Nayyar:
Sports-specific nutrition is an integral part of a sports person. Share with us the diet pattern that you follow to stay healthy and physically fit?
Ms. Heena Sidhu:
As a shooter the diet which I try to follow is basically a no sugar diet because sugar gives you an insulin rush and increases your heart rate and later you also feel irritable. So anything that gives a high or low in your mood and in your physiology should be avoided so sugar is one, coffee, tea are another so try to avoid these things green tea can be good, green tea has very low amounts of caffeine as compare to the black tea and the coffee which have high amount of caffeine. You need to have lots of roughage, proteins of course are good, proteins are good for any athlete in fact for the general recovery of the muscles for post training.
Hydration is very important, hydration is something which everybody knows drinking three to four litres of water is a must, especially if you are travelling you tend to forget drinking water, and I’m using the word forget because if you are drinking water when you feel thirsty it’s basically you have already dehydrated and that is why you feel thirsty so we try to never reach that point where you start feeling thirsty and then if it’s a hot day you need to have even more water. Other than that I think it’s very important to keep your vitamins level in check to have your general blood check up every three months so that you know if you’re good at vitamins.
So these are certain things that are known for every athlete getting the blood work done every three months so that the doctors can up and down the dose of your supplements. So as a shooter these are the only steps I take as far as my diet goes and on an individual level I think I have never enjoyed sweets as much as the others do. I see people loving desserts and they love gulab jamuns and it’s very hard for them to give up these things. Whereas for me I naturally never had the intention of having too many sweets so giving up sugar was easy for me just giving up tea was difficult. I was always a tea person (very addicted to tea) so later when I came to know that this is how it’s effects your brain and your mood plus the effects of sugar in it so I had to give up but I took my time giving up slowly. I still have tea now and then but usually when if I’m taking off from shooting, when I’m travelling.