A life long journey.
Shodhan Rai attributes his attachment to bodybuilding to his father, who introduced him to the sport at age 10. Later on, at age 16 he had the experience and physical maturity to seriously devote himself to the sport.
Twenty years after that, Rai has won multiple accolades including gold medals at Men’s Open Bodybuilding at the Natural World Cup 2017, and the Natural Universe in Auckland ’17 in September. Now Rai is deep in preparation for Mr Karnataka 2018. He told Deccan Chronicle:
“Mr Karnataka is a tough contest, and I always like to compete here since the best athletes from Karnataka get on stage every year. It is also a platform for the state team selections. Since I just finished the international contests, I was in pretty good form -best of my career so far I would say- I am trying to maintain similar conditioning and hope for the best result.”
This year alone, Rai has been highly active. He took golds in Natural Mr India 2017 Natural Universe 2017, Natural World Cup 2017, and bronze in Natural Olympia 2017.
“The year 2017 has been the best year of my career so far in natural bodybuilding. These have been my best experiences so far because the standard of athletes was top notch and every year, the standard got even better. Interacting with them, sharing on their contest preparation methods and training routine were some of the biggest take-aways from the event.”
Rai loves traveling and uses his success in bodybuilding to take trips around the world and give talks in schools and universities. He believes that how we use our genetics are more important than genetics themselves.
“When you don’t put your body through experimenting with different workouts and diet, when you don’t give enough time for your body to respond, you won’t understand your own body. Be patient!”
He concluded by conceding that although it is possible for the average person to achieve great results, at the professional level, bodybuilding must basically be full-time.
“Bodybuilding takes a long time to show results. So, planning is key. I do fitness consulting too, but bodybuilding is my priority. You can have an alternate career but not a taxing and time consuming one.”
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