Malhar Ganla’s Everyday Athlete : Lessons in Endurance
We are often told to ‘just start,’ but Malhar Ganla’s Everyday Athlete reveals that the real challenge lies in the “middle”—that flat, dull stretch where excitement has faded and the finish line is nowhere in sight. Through the lens of his own failures and triumphs, Ganla’s debut offers a masterclass in building an ‘earned identity’ through pure consistency. Reviews Manjulaa Shirodkar
“Malhar, you keep talking about passion. But to people like me, people who’ve built everything from nothing, you sound entitled. Either do something… or just shut up.”
A throwaway sentence like this in the middle of a book which refuses to be bottled in a genre stops you from reading further…. For here is where you begin to get a glimpse of the man behind the words, the pages – the whole book.
Unlike many, here is a man who refuses to play victim to draw the reader into his life by recreating his moments of pain.
The book is replete with his life-altering moments. Ones that made him feel humiliated but also made him think about where he was headed and why. If at all. Moments where he attempts to capture his restlessness while riddled with self-doubt until arriving at his current identity as the Co-Founder of Freedom From Diabetes and Obesity (FFD), one of India’s leading organizations dedicated to reversing metabolic disease.
Meet Dr. Malhar Ganla whose debut book Everyday Athlete – How Movement Transforms Mind, Body and Life makes an everyday appeal to the sedentary soul in us. By sharing his own life’s challenges, Malhar makes us aware of the potential that we have as humans. He mentions his frailties matter-of-factly as though he wouldn’t have shared them at all, if he knew any better.
But by making you a party to his life’s transitional instances, he makes you aware that while all of us may be facing challenges – from medical to mental to physical and spiritual, they can’t become our excuses to not live life as it is meant to be lived. Dynamically. Holistically. Just as Malhar faced his biggest medical challenge – a temporal lobe seizure which stopped his life mid-point in 2019 and confined him to a wheelchair for months – till he was able to make a comeback. To his zindagi 2.0.
Yet, Malhar doesn’t set out to be a hero in Everyday Athlete. He just lays himself bare: word after word, line after line, page after page. He mentions his professional qualification of being a dentist almost apologetically while admitting to bearing the burden of not living up to his parents’ qualifications of being successful medical practitioners.
Born to the Pune-based couple, Dr. Hamir – a pediatrician and Dr. Nirmala Ganla, a gynecologist, Malhar followed in their medical footsteps almost automatically. But none of them were thrilled about it. Malhar didn’t enjoy his practice and his parents were (well, to say the least) uncomfortable. In his own words“My grandfather Vishwas Ganla… carved his path in medicine, earning an MD … and rose through the ranks to become the Dean of Pune’s prestigious B. J. Medical College and later D.M.E.R of the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences….
“My parents … were toppers all through school and college – high achievers who set the bar impossibly high, at least for me. … Of course, dinner table conversations revolved around surgeries, diagnosis and the latest in medical advancements. And then there was me – an academic catastrophe. I didn’t fit….
“Dentistry wasn’t my dream. It was my escape hatch. Growing up, medicine or engineering weren’t options; they were expectations. I knew I wasn’t as brilliant as my parents or their friends’ kids. So I picked an easier path, to be called a “doctor.” Maybe that would get them, if not the world, to respect me.”
Malhar walks you through his insecurity, a desire to matter, and to measure up to his parents and grandfather’s legacy, craving to be someone who can impact lives. But first, you relate to the vacuum – that feeling of emptiness when you realize that you too have been trying to measure up to expectations of your parents, mentors, peers, siblings, relatives and most of all your own – and just like that, the knot tightens in your stomach.
It is as though Malhar is seeking to find himself and, in that quest has answered some elusive questions for himself and for you. He unveils his fears of failing, talks about the “shadow of doubt” which follows him around constantly. Till he finds in himself a runner – an identity beyond that of a son, a doctor, a husband and a father.
And when he decides to go and study abroad, his parents and wife Dr. Kanchan lend their support, as only a family can. “The next morning, my dad and mom came into my room and simply said, “Go. If you don’t do this now, you never will….
The night before I left, I couldn’t sleep. … I sat beside my wife in the dark.
“Say something,” I said.
“I don’t know if it’s right,” she said. “But I do know that if you don’t go now, you’ll resent everything you stay for.”
One by one as you turn the pages, a new identity emerges – that of a man who found himself through the study of movement, metabolic health and through Triathlon – an extreme endurance sport. After having studied exercise science in Auckland, New Zealand, Malhar returned to Pune to devote himself to his calling.
The journey hasn’t been easy. From his stammer and hesitancy while attempting public speaking for the first time to guiding thousands through reversal programs over the years, Malhar has come a long way indeed.
He found his identity as a runner, a swimmer and a Marathon man… an Ironman. For the uninformed, an Ironman Triathlon is one of the world’s premier, gruelling one day endurance races, consisting of a 3.86 kms swim, 180.25 kms bike ride and a 42.2 kms marathon run.
Held globally, competitors must complete the event within 17 hours. The series also includes the ‘half-ironman’ and requires intense, long-term training. Though he never competed professionally, Malhar certainly trained for the sport, participating in races regularly across countries. It had become his refuge.
Slowly, things started to come together. His desire to support those struggling with obesity issues coupled with the innate faith that people are waiting to find the athlete in themselves fused. And life took a turn when he joined Dr Pramod Tripathi and the Freedom From Diabetes program as its Co-Founder.
Here’s a book which gives you gyan not because the author comes from a position of ‘I know better or more than you’ but because he has lived a life which most could learn from and aspire for.
It is a journey of finding oneself and encouraging others to recognize their own potential. It doesn’t tell you movement will enrich you. It tells you – how movement will become the foundation for all that you wish to achieve. Movement should not be fitness driven but a modality through which the body finds its intrinsic purpose.
As late Dr K. B. Grant, the Founder of Ruby Hall (one of the most prestigious health care facilities in Pune) told Malhar, “Start doing something. Don’t wait to figure everything out. If it’s meant for you, life will send feedback. If it flows, it’s probably right. If it blocks you at every turn, maybe it’s not. But don’t aim for big things at the start. Just start somewhere.”
Malhar lets his experiences encourage you to think for yourself, live your life, see how exercise can change your life.
Malhar writes as he speaks. His writing mirrors the Stream of Consciousness technique but am sure, unconsciously. The approach is conversational, anecdotal and compellingly draws you in. Short staccato sentences written for absorption and maximum impact. Its casual and intense… almost like a thought is being drawn from him – not that he wanted to say it out loud. He runs away from dispensing wisdom but ends up giving it anyway.
Sample this: “I remember a 10K run. The first few kilometres were easy. The body felt light. The legs moved willingly. The crowd carried me forward. I had to consciously slow myself down. That part never worried me. The finish didn’t either. It was the middle.
That dull, flat stretch when you’re not fresh anymore but you are nowhere close to the finish line.
Nothing hurts badly enough to stop. But everything hurts enough to make you question yourself. This is where the mind shows up. Why are you doing this? You are not enjoying this.
You could slow down. You could walk. No one would care.
Earlier, that voice usually won. But out there somewhere between kilometre five and seven there was nowhere to escape to. I couldn’t justify quitting. I couldn’t negotiate a better deal. I could only decide whether to stay or step away.
So I stayed.
That middle taught me something no book ever had. Life rarely breaks us at the start. And it doesn’t test you at the finish. It tests you in the middle – when the excitement is gone, the end isn’t visible, and nothing external is pushing you anymore…
“Endurance gave me an earned identity. I was becoming someone who shows up no matter what.”
Malhar uses his journey to transform others. By understanding his mental and physical self, by being his own patient first and foremost, he has today reached a point where he along with Dr Tripathi has guided over 60,000 people through reversal programs.
Almost as an aside, he writes in Everyday Athlete,
“I wouldn’t just see it (stress) as a mental health issue. I would see the whole picture.
“That night I wrote in my journal.
“Humans aren’t designed for this. For being so far from what matters. My body is responding exactly as it should. The stress (of being away from his family and his little children) I feel isn’t weakness. It’s my nervous system telling me something is wrong. That I am too far from my tribe. That I’m living out of alignment with what my biology needs.
“I wrote about how strange it was to be studying health while feeling so unhealthy. To be learning about resilience while feeling so fragile. To be understanding the importance of social connection while being completely isolated.
“But I also wrote about what I was learning.
That stress isn’t just mental. Its physical. Measurable. That chronic disconnection damages the body in real concrete ways. That the stress I felt wasn’t just sadness. It was biology. Hormones out of balance. Nervous system dysregulated. Sleep disrupted. Immune function probably compromised. And I wrote about how this understanding would matter later. When I worked with patients. When someone came to me saying they felt stressed, tired, overwhelmed.
I wouldn’t just see it as a mental health issue. I’d see the whole picture…. and I’d know that telling them to “just relax” wouldn’t help. They’d need tools. Real practical interventions. Movement to train the stress response. Connection to release oxytocin. Sleep to repair. Nutrition to support the nervous system.
I’d understand because I’d lived it.”
Malhar doesn’t come across as the expert, but one who has struggled to find his footing and his calling through effort and ache. He reaches out to you to do the same and find yourself through movement. As an introduction to Everyday Athlete, he writes on one of his social media handles:
“Movement is not a target to be achieved.
It is the language through which the body communicates with the mind.
When movement becomes regular, something subtle begins to shift. Muscles strengthen yes, but attention steadies. Emotional responses soften. A quiet sense of reliability returns the feeling that the body is no longer something to fight or neglect, but something to trust.
Over time, posture adapts. Breathing becomes less guarded. Reactions slow. Life does not become easier, but it becomes more manageable not because challenges reduce, but because the body becomes better equipped to carry them.
An everyday athlete is not defined by intensity (but) defined by continuity.”
Continuity… that is the key to becoming the best version of who we can be. We only have to start somewhere and do something about it. Daily. Shut up – not yourself (as someone had told Malhar once). Shut up the Excuse in you. Just Try. Move.
*This is a pre-release review of the Everyday Athlete. The book will be available on leading online portals shortly.
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