Not Enough Time To Work Out? This Father Balances Bodybuilding With Being A Pilot
If you’re anything like us, you’ve used the “it’s not that I don’t
Well, maybe not for this incredible Myprotein ambassador. (Spoiler alert: prepare to be amazed).
Gaurav Taneja is a 33-year-old from Delhi. He originally studied to be a civil engineer at one of India’s most prestigious universities, but decided to pursue a career in aviation instead, so trained to be a pilot in the States.
Along the way, he fell in love with fitness and weight training — so much so, that upon the recommendation of others, he decided to enter a bodybuilding competition. He came first place on his first attempt.
Gaurav continued to compete, rising through the ranks from state-level to national-level competitions, and became well known in the bodybuilding community as the “the guy who flies an aircraft”.
He then decided he wanted to reach more people so he set up a fitness vlog on YouTube to share his training and nutrition advice with others. Today, this vlog now has over 1.6 million subscribers. Oh, and on top of that he’s a husband and father.
So, just to summarise, Gaurav juggles a full-time career as a pilot with sticking to a dedicated training and nutrition regime, alongside maintaining a super-successful vlog and spending time with his family. Whew.
We were lucky enough to get a slot in his hectic schedule to find out how he got to where he is now — and, more importantly, how on earth he manages to fit everything in.
Finding fitness
Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of Gaurav’s story — and there’s a lot to choose from — is that he didn’t even start out intending to make it big in the bodybuilding world. You could even say that he got into competing on a complete whim.
As a young man, all his effort and focus was aimed at getting into IITD (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi), which he says to this day is still the achievement he’s proudest of.
With odds like that, it’s clear that Gaurav is more than just a hard worker — it takes a serious amount of self-belief, commitment and dedication to even consider applying for a course that competitive. But he did, and he was successful.
It was at IITD that he discovered his love for fitness properly, too. He’d been into cricket as a child and was fairly sporty at school, but it wasn’t until college that he really got into weight training.
That continued until he got his degree and made the decision to go into aviation. He went over to America, learnt how to fly, and then got a job back in India as a pilot. It almost sounds simple, right? And of course, he managed to keep working out regularly at the same time.
For a while Gaurav told himself that as a pilot he just wouldn’t have the time to act on these comments from admiring strangers. But then after so many people asking him the same thing, he got curious. What if he did try competing?
He decided to go to a local bodybuilding contest where he knew a friend of his was competing, and as soon as he saw him on the stage he told himself he was going to be up there himself next year.
So, in 2012 Gaurav found himself a coach who could guide him through the intense training and nutrition regime he’d need to prepare himself for competitive bodybuilding. This was an online coach though, as he was still working full-time as a pilot (as you do).
Fast forward a year and he was ready to step on that stage himself. It was his first ever competition and he won gold. His second time, he won gold again. Third time, you guessed it — gold.
Unsurprisingly, this caused a bit of a stir. People wanted to know where he was from, if he was from out of town, because he was such a new face. He became famous within the bodybuilding circles in India as the ‘guy who flies an aircraft’, especially when he began to move up the ranks in terms of competing. From 2013 to 2017 he prepped for show after show, competing at state level and then national level.
He’s taken a break from competing in the last couple of years, but he’s vowed to return at least once more; “one last show before I hang up my boots”.
Finding a platform
During his time competing, Gaurav inevitably learnt a lot about training and nutrition. He learnt about how the body functions and what it needs to function, while he put himself through the “torture” of going down to such low body fat.
He still had people approaching him in gyms, often to ask him for advice, which he was happy to give. It made him realise that he could only share his knowledge this way with a handful of people at a time.
He started off small. His vlogs were mainly about debunking all the myths surrounding supplements, i.e. what to buy that actually worked and where to buy them at an affordable price. He explained what water weight was and how to lose it. You could say that his USP was making fitness and weight training accessible to the average Joe.
Gaurav’s channel, “Flying Beast”, currently has over 1.6million subscribers.
Finding a balance
So just how does one man fit so much into 24 hours a day? Squeezing a workout in before or after a regular 9-5 desk job can be challenging enough — how do you fit training in around an unpredictable flight schedule with overnight stays and changing time zones?
Gaurav actually thinks that this kind of schedule has helped him to use his time more effectively.
Definitely no time to be scrolling through social media in-between sets then.
Often Gaurav would have to specially request for hotels to open their gyms for him at ridiculous times (we’re talking 2/3am in the morning) just so that he could get in a workout around flying.
He admits that the training was always the easy part for him, even after long-haul flights or during overnight stays — it was the nutrition that was more of a struggle. Forget enjoying the local cuisine or indulging in fast food just for the convenience, he had macros to stick to.
Now that’s dedication.
You have to wonder whether Gaurav ever considered throwing in the towel to pursue the bodybuilding full-time, rather than juggling it around such a demanding career. The answer is yes; he did consider it. In fact, he took a break from aviation for around a month to test it out, and he discovered that it just didn’t work for him.
Gaurav’s take home message
With such an impressive CV, we had to get some words of wisdom from Gaurav. Here are his two pieces of advice:
We don’t know about you, but we’re happy to take time-management advice from a man like Gaurav.
Lauren is an English Literature graduate originally from the South. She’s always loved swimming, has discovered the power of weight training over the past few years, and has lots of room for improvement in her weekly hot yoga class.
On the weekends she’s usually cooking or eating some kind of brunch, and she enjoys trying out new recipes with her housemates – especially since shaking off student habits, like mainly surviving off pasta. Above all, she’s a firm believer in keeping a balance between the gym and gin.
Find out more about Lauren’s experience here.
