Urmi Kothari: Why Consistency Might NOT Be Key

Even after working out exactly as planned, do you sometimes feel unfulfilled and dissatisfied with your effort? If that is the case, you might feel that there is something that you are not doing right. Sometimes, in order to be consistent, we often ignore the importance of integrating the mind & body. We focus only on the body, which results in partial growth. Consistency, then, might not be enough for a transformation to a healthier life. For example, if a person puts themselves through mental stress throughout the day so that they can squeeze in a consistent two-hour workout in their daily schedule, the purpose of fitness fails.

Coach Urmi, an Energy Coach, discusses this at length in a conversation with SocialBoat. Read on to know what important element is missing from your workout sessions so that your efforts can be appropriately rewarded.  

What does Urmi do as an energy coach?

Urmi helps her students strengthen their minds and sharpen their bodies through mindful functional fitness and sessions that develop their self-awareness. In fitness, she focuses on weight training using kettlebells, free weights and running while combining it with mind-body workouts like animal flow, yoga, and pilates. To develop the awareness quotient, she uses meditation, breathing, and journaling as a way to help people develop more connections with themselves, their bodies, and decision-making. Through her ‘Kinetic Living’ philosophy, she is combining the dynamism from athletics and functional fitness with body-breath awareness from martial arts and mind-body workouts. Urmi defines herself as,

“I help people reflect, elevate, and align their physical, emotional, and rational selves to help them achieve their best potential.”

With a team of 5-6 coaches who are taking regular group sessions, Urmi currently offers premium memberships, community memberships, club memberships, and booster programs.

In their programs, Kinetic Living and Coach Urmi focus not just on lifting heavier weights with good form but on maximizing the person’s energy and their connection with their body to boost their fitness and brainpower.

Looking back at the 25-year-long journey.

Having started her fitness journey at the age of 12, and hence, with an experience of about 25 years so far, Coach Urmi has come a long long way. Among all this, she talks about the two most significant turning points in life-

1. After completing her MBA and while working, Urmi started thinking about different things for herself. After some self-reflection, she realized that,

“I don't wanna be known for my designation but for who I am.”

That’s when she moved to Kerala to study and train with her guru, Daksha Sheth (daksha_sheth_dc ), where she learned about body awareness and fitness from a movement perspective.

“I knew it then that I would never go back to a desk job.”

Urmi then wanted to teach all that she had learned but it wasn’t just dance. She combined it with sports and movement together.

2. The second most important turning point came recently when after the first wave of COVID, Urmi started a new business vertical of online on-demand videos. She decided to wrap up her Khar house after having lived there for four years. She wanted to focus on growing and evolving the business on a new path and develop a base outside Mumbai.

Urmi, who always loved spending time outside the city, wanted to go out for a vacation. But because of the pandemic, she instead went for a workation to Goa because it was always her intention to live outside Mumbai city. In 2021, she started living in the mountains of Tehri.

As a result of the move, Urmi made the decision to make ‘Kinetic Living’ completely online. So the pandemic turned out to be an opportunity-in-disguise for Urmi.

An Unconventional Approach to Fitness

Urmi explains that fitness has been popularly taught and reinforced on the foundations of discipline and consistency. But like many popular fitness practices have become old, this too is a trend, just like DTPs (Drastic Transformation Programs) were ten years ago. However, people are slowly realizing that having a society that produces people that work like machines is no longer going to work. When people eat outside their diet, they feel guilty, but still do not stop. In such a scenario, drastic efforts might not always be fruitful.

“Clearly, there is a mindset problem.”

Urmi further says that the concept of consistency depends on the belief that life is the same every day, which it isn’t. People go on vacations, have uneven work, and so it is very difficult, almost impossible to be consistent.

“Essentially, we start associating our progress with consistency, and limit ourselves to a bunch of to-do lists which makes us push our emotions under the carpet and do only what physical fitness requires.”

If the emotions are not acknowledged, there is no wholesome and integrated development of the mind and the body, and hence, no peace of mind.

“So on some days lifting weights might be self-care but on other days, just taking a hot water bath is. Consistency has to be envisioned, not defined.”

With such a new approach to fitness and lifestyle, people from Urmi’s programs have walked away with so much knowledge that they can apply to their lives over the next few months. It has helped them to reduce anxiety, change bingeing patterns, and have hope.

“It is about how people apply learnings in their lives, unlike reducing fitness to calories, abs, etc.”

Quoting from Kinetic Living’s philosophy,

“The perspective is that exercise is not about calories spent but about the quality of movement and its benefit.”

The Development of Such an Approach

Urmi is an avid reader of philosophy books and she has developed the ‘Kinetic Living’ fitness philosophy from her own lived experiences and reading. She does not believe in reading how-to health and fitness books because she believes that by developing her own approach, the process of achieving a fit mind and body becomes more authentic.  

To make her own philosophy known, she is writing a book that busts some very dominant mindset myths and explains the concept of an energy coach. The book should be out very soon. For now, Urmi recommends reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (csikszentmihalyi_flow ), Awareness by Osho ( osho.herenow
), Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (thesleepdiplomat ), Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg, The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm (erichfrommgram ), and Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Urmi’s approach towards the collective growth of the mind and the body makes us rethink our perspectives on fitness and calls for some self-reflection.  

For more such unconventional stories of fitness trainers, visit SocialBoat.