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Writer's pictureRustom Warden

Lessons in Fitness, Fun, and Friendship

My name is Rustom, and I’m a fitness instructor and a music therapist based in Mumbai, India. As part of my work, I conduct fitness and bootcamp training sessions for children and adults in Mumbai. Working with individuals with special needs fell into my lap, when my first Down syndrome student, (whose name is Mihaan) came to my fitness class for children.


Down’s syndrome occurs when an individual is born with an extra chromosome, and people with this condition often face developmental challenges. When he joined my class, I decided not to read about the condition to allow myself to go with my own instinct. Along the way, I got to know Mihaan more and more and began to notice and admire his purity and innocence, as well as his outstanding sense of humour. As word of mouth spread, I started working more with special populations. Not only did I see a difference in myself and how I was learning to adjust, but I saw a difference in the other ‘neurotypical’ students as well. Gradually, my class became a mixed bag of every shape, size, and capacity, and I was so proud of it. 


In 2022, Mihaan told me he was interested in running the Tata 10 km Marathon in Mumbai, which takes place in January each year. We decided to dive into this challenge together, and so our training began. This entire process taught me things I never expected, and completely changed my mindset.

Mihaan (left) and Rustom (right) chatting after the marathon. Image Source: Author’s Own

As a trainer, my first goal is always to understand and accept the individual nature of the person I train. No two people are the same, so how could the path they take and the progress they make be? Each person is different, but each person is human, and humans have their differences and their flaws - my goal is to honour this and treat them with patience, friendship, and respect, no matter what they’re labelled as. The teaching method that I use is secondary to all this. I’ve never wanted to be labelled as a teacher myself. I’d rather be a friend who can support them and maybe guide them just a bit. 

 

So, we started really slow, with maybe jogging a maximum of four to five stretches of 200 metres. Gradually we increased to walking and jogging two kilometres and, after that, everything just seemed to fall into place. 

 

This journey taught me a lot about running with Mihaan. I am an ex-timing runner- which means finishing a run in a pre-identified timeframe, beginning with each training session as well. But, with Mihaan I had to get ready to adjust my experience to fit his needs and train him to the best of my ability. I had to throw the concept of doing the run within a particular time out of the window for the first time. We would not run continuously, which is the usual strategy when training for a marathon. Occasionally, as we first started, we would not run for stretches of 100 metres. The main goal of this process is to make the run a fun run - not only for Mihaan, but for me as well. I had to be ready to stop at regular intervals - whether it was for patting dogs walking at Mumbai’s world-famous Marine Drive, or talking to people as we went along. Unlike my previous experience as a trainer, I could not plan anything.

 

And it was so freeing. 

 

To say Mihaan loves talking is an understatement. He talks almost every step of his run. Traditionally, if I was training someone, I would tell them to preserve their energy during practice. I could easily have told him to not talk and to preserve his energy while he runs, but that would just spoil his fun. Because we were talking through the run we could not wear earphones, so we would carry a mini speaker so both of us could enjoy music while we ran.

 

We would run. We would sing. We would chat. When people saw Mihaan and me running, they’d be envious of the fun we seemed to be having and wanted to join in. Soon, we suddenly had an entourage of people running with us. In the process, he also inspired other specially-abled individuals to participate in the 10 km. He also had the chance to meet athletic superstars Yohan Blake and Katie Moon, and his jovial personality and well-thought-out jokes made them laugh.


Today, Mihaan is preparing for his third 10 km marathon. He can now run stretches of more than 1 km. Between his marathons in 2023 and 2024, he dropped a whole hour. But that doesn’t matter, because we still enjoy doing it so much.

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