Ambarin Kadri remembers the early, carefree days of breakdancing in India when working out in the gym was a rarity and anything that would fill a ravenous stomach passed off as nutrition. "We would be breaking anywhere between six to nine hours a day. And at the end of that, we’d probably do a couple of push-ups, some crunches, and cool down with a few stretches. Certainly, no one was having multi-vitamins or protein supplements like they do now. Some, like me, would probably carry a tiffin along. The rest of my crew-mates would eat whatever they could find: sandwiches, rolls… basically junk. Back in the day, we were all over the place, just wanting results and wanting to get better at techniques," says Kadri, who is known in breaking circles as Am-B. When Am-B speaks of ‘back in the day’, she means the 2000s when breakers started to emerge in the country. Earlier in May, at Mumbai’s NESCO Exhibition Centre, as some of India’s top B-Boys and B-Girls went head-spin to head-spin at the Red Bull BC One Cypher India, it was clear that the new generation of breakers was much more athlete-like in their approach. Fittingly so. In two decades, as the once-offbeat dance form has transitioned to a sport that is inching into mainstream consciousness — thanks to its inclusion as a medal event at the Asian Games in Hangzhou and next year’s Paris Olympics — there has also been a shift in mindset with new-age B-Boys and B-Girls being as finicky about their gym routines and diets as world-class athletes. While the Hangzhou and Paris inclusions led a lot of breakers to pay more attention to the way high-performance athletes trained in other sports, Am B, who started in 2006 and was among the first generation of Indian breakers, believes the switch from the initial days of insouciance happened due to the most sporty reason of all: injuries. Understanding own bodies “When most of us started, we were in our teens or early 20s. Then as we grew older and matured, we realised if we wanted to stick around, we needed to understand our bodies better, feed ourselves better and take care of them better. Be it spinal issues, neck, lower back, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees… everything was almost busted. We started to realise why we needed to be fit. This was in 2015. But over the last five-six years, as the Asian Games and Paris Olympics inclusion happened, this shift towards fitness has accelerated!” she adds. B-Boy Wildchild — known to the outside world as Eshwar Tiwari — says he spends around seven to eight hours a day on his pursuit to become the country’s best breaker. Out of those, he spends anywhere between an hour to three everyday toiling in the gym. “For anyone to start doing the moves we do, you need to put in years to perfect them. You can’t rely on just technique. The power and flexibility you need to sharpen a move, you’ll find only in the gym,” adds B-Girl Glib (Simran Ranga), who won the 2023 Red Bull BC One Cypher India. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Red Bull BC One (@redbullbcone) B-Boy Flying Machine — who also spends long hours in the gym and has hired the services of a personal nutritionist — is learning capoeira (the Brazilian-African discipline that combines martial arts with dancing), and does yoga everyday because he believes these will give him an edge on the floor. Since the sport got inducted into the Asiad and the Olympic programs, he's been watching training videos of athletes from other disciplines to see how they take care of their body. It’s natural that B-Boys and B-Girls are finding parallels to the world of high-performance sport. After all, under their baggy fits, all of them have enough balance in their contorting, twisting bodies to make a gymnast stop mid-runup and cock an eyebrow. "Just imagine: your body is spinning on the ground and in the blink of an eye, you're now in the air, spinning. It takes so much out of your body. You have to defy gravity. You have to set your body into motion. That requires both strength and balance," says Flying Machine, who could well have been describing gymnastics. “Breaking is not like a dance in many ways. In other dance forms, you can take a break for a few months, come back and continue without a stutter. Your body will react the same. But in breaking, if you train for five years and take a one-year break, your body is not going to behave the same way it used to when you were doing it for five years at a stretch.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Arif Chaudhary 🚀 (@bboyflyingmachine) While the Asian Games and Olympics spotlight has expedited the athletisation of B-Boys and B-Girls, a semblance of respect also has crept into the sport. “Earlier people would make snide comments that we are background dancers in movies. Yeh dekho, Salman ke peeche nachta hai. After Paris 2024, sabko pata chalega!” says Wildchild.
