Indian shuttler Sai Praneeth says working on fitness helped him succeed

India has been doing quite well in badminton in recent years. Not only the ladies, even the men are showing their mettle in the international scene.

One of them is Sai Praneeth (another talent being coached by Pullela Gopichand). Praneeth currently is going through the best phase of his career and says that his focus on fitness has made all the difference.

Always regarded as an extremely talented shuttler, Praneeth however failed to live up to the expectations and many say that it’s because of his lack of focus on fitness. Despite having a stylish crafty game, he failed to convert his talent into titles.

But all that started changing after he started working on his fitness.

“I always have a good game but lack of proper fitness slowed me down. So I worked very hard on my fitness. Before the Singapore tournament I trained for seven weeks and before this tournament I worked hard for one month. These longer periods of practice helped my game a lot,” he said, adding that he would focus more on getting fitter and fitter,” says Sai.

“I have very good strokes. I only need to build endurance and get fitter. With this sort of fitness I think I can win more and more titles. In men’s singles the standard is quite high and this is the first time I won back-to-back titles in two major tournaments. Winning titles gives a great feeling. I want to win more such titles in future. This undoubtedly is the best phase of my career.” he added.