The Fit Folk

All the folk — page 6

• Shimoga, Karnataka, India

  Shekhar Naik

  Shekhar Naik is an Indian blind cricketer, born completely blind in Arakere village, Shimoga district, Karnataka, due to hereditary blindness in his maternal family, who went on to captain the India national blind cricket team. Made captain in 2010, he led India to victory in the T20 Blind Cricket World Cup in 2012 and the Blind Cricket World Cup in 2014, and in 2017 was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honor, becoming the first blind sportsperson to receive it.

• Delhi

  Soniya Singh Khatri

  Delhi-based strength training creator (@fitgirl_08) who built an audience by making lifting approachable for women — training content without gatekeeping.

• Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), Uttar Pradesh, India

  Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj

  Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj is an Indian IAS officer of the 2007 Uttar Pradesh cadre and a para-badminton player who has won silver medals at both the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in men's singles SL4, making him the only Indian para-badminton player to win back-to-back Paralympic medals; born 2 July 1983 in Hassan, Karnataka, with a congenital deformity in his left ankle, he is reported to hold the World No. 1 ranking in his category, graduated in Computer Engineering from NIT Surathkal, has served as District Magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar and Prayagraj, and is the only IAS officer in India to have received both a Paralympic medal and the Arjuna Award.

• Sonipat, Haryana, India

  Sumit Antil

  Sumit Antil is a Paralympic javelin thrower from Sonipat, Haryana, who switched from wrestling to javelin after losing his left leg below the knee in a motorbike accident at age 17, going on to set world records in the men's F64 category.

• Clarksville, Maryland, United States

  Tatyana McFadden

  Tatyana McFadden is a seven-time Paralympian (2004, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2020, 2024) who has won 22 Paralympic medals, including 8 gold, and 24 Abbott World Marathon Majors races, with reported marathon grand slams — winning Boston, Chicago, London, and New York in the same year — in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016; born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, with spina bifida, she attended the University of Illinois on a wheelchair basketball scholarship before competing in wheelchair track there, and now resides in Clarksville, Maryland.

• Mohali, Punjab

  Tripat Singh

  Began weight training in his sixties after a period of depression following the 1999 death of his wife, Manjeet, as he described in an interview with Humans of Bombay. Now in his seventies (reported as 75 by The Indian Express/SikhNet and as 76 by The Bridge and Republic World), the Chandigarh/Mohali-based vegan lifter posts free-weight, pull-up, and burpee push-up workouts on Instagram (@_tripat_singh), where his following grew from roughly 71,000 around 2020–2021 to reportedly over a million by 2025. Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma publicly shared his terrace workout clips, calling him their fitness inspiration.

• New Delhi

  Vasu Mittal

  Training since 2014 and coaching from New Delhi, Vasu Mittal built his name on documented client transformations and practical coaching content.

• Gurgaon, Delhi NCR

  Yashmeen Chauhan

  Gurugram-based bodybuilder and fitness coach whose HuffPost India profile frames her muscularity as a challenge to Haryana's patriarchal norms; she won bronze at the IFBB's 50th Asian Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships in Beijing in 2016, was named India's first Neullife Cellucor sponsored athlete per Women Fitness Org, and runs Sculpt Gym in Sector 14, Gurgaon, where she has documented her own shift from cardio-heavy routines to heavy strength training.

• Mumbai, India

  Yasmin Karachiwala

  Yasmin Karachiwala is a Mumbai-based fitness instructor described as the pioneer of Pilates in India, reported to be the first BASI-certified Pilates instructor in the country; she founded the Yasmin Karachiwala Body Image (YKBI) studio brand and is known for training Bollywood actresses including Alia Bhatt, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor. She has promoted a strong-over-skinny approach to fitness and has advocated weight-training for women. Independent coverage has reported her Instagram following in the range of several hundred thousand to near one million, with figures varying by source and date.