Earthquake bamboo bars and weighted jackets: Inside weightlifter Mirabai Chanu’s backbreaking workout routine

For a few fleeting seconds in December last year, as Mirabai Chanu hoed an 87kg bar over her head and attempted to stand up to complete her final snatch attempt at the World Weightlifting Championships, her right leg seemed trapped under the combined weight of her body and the barbell.
Her face gave away the strain her body was under. It felt imminent that she would drop the bar. Then, almost out of nowhere, her left leg shot ahead and stabilised her. In the next few seconds, Mirabai managed to salvage the lift, a feat that got even the technical officials to applaud.
Mira went on to claim silver at the World Championships in Bogota, that 87kg final snatch attempt aiding her in putting a total of 200kg (113kg in clean and jerk). Had she dropped the third lift, she would have taken home a bronze, behind China’s Jiang Huihua (total of 206kg) and Tokyo Olympics champion Hou Zhihui (total of 198kg) in the women’s 49kg weight class.

//www.instagram.com/embed.js
Mira credits that save to the hours of backbreaking work in the gym, where, besides regular training, she has added some nifty innovations introduced into her workouts since 2019 Dr Aaron Horschig, a former weightlifter-turned-physiotherap.
“If you look at that moment at the Bogota World Championships, despite me having to shift my lower body weight quickly to catch myself from toppling over or dropping the weight, the top half of my body was able to stay locked with the 87 kg weight in place. Pulling off that lift wouldn’t have been possible if I had not worked extensively on improving my shoulder stability using things like earthquake bamboo bars,” Mira told The Indian Express.
The innovations added to Mira’s routines range from something as unique as the earthquake bamboo bar to weighted jackets.

//www.instagram.com/embed.js
The earthquake bar is designed so that weights loaded on it jiggle as the lifter raises it. The bar has grooves, on which weights are hung rather than fastened. This is why, as repetitions increase, the act of lifting the weight gets trickier and wobblier. This forces lifters to use their upper body muscles to overcome the vibrations on the bar and gain control on the gyrating weights.
If that’s not complicated enough, Mira trains loading plastic globes filled with water, which adds a wicked amount of wobble in the bar with each successive rep. Besides small plates, the water globes weigh anywhere between 7.5 kg to 10kg on each side. The weight loaded on the bar depends on what they’re trying to achieve in that session. If they’re trying to isolate just the shoulder, the weights will be 7.5 kg on each side. But if they’re making her do lunges with the bar held aloft, the weight will be heavier.

//www.instagram.com/embed.js
On an average, Mira said she trained for seven hours a day. In that time, she does earthquake bar routines twice a week, each workout lasting about half an hour.
“To improve your performance at the elite level, you need to incorporate these small tricks in training. You cannot just keep doing snatch and clean & jerk lifts. The earthquake bamboo bar helps improve stability of your shoulders and adds strength to the muscles. My left side was weaker than the right shoulder. So from one side, I couldn’t push the bar up with the same intensity. In clean and jerk, it was not that big an issue, but in snatch, I used to feel a pain in my wr as it was compensating for the shortcomings of my shoulder,” said the TOPS athlete who trains at SAI Patiala.
Keeping injury-free
These specific exercises help Mira not just in strengthening her muscles, but also help in stability on the lifting platform. But for Mira, considering how she’s now a senior weightlifter, the workload she is given in training has to be more carefully monitored lest she pick up an injury.
As national coach Vijay Sharma explained: “In weightlifting, there’s a concept called training age (the years you have been training with weights). Mira’s training age is on the higher side, so we need to be very careful with her training. We need to ensure we don’t put too much load.”
This is where the earthquake bar comes in handy as an athlete can load a minimal amount of weight on the bar and still activate their muscles and raise the difficulty level of the workout.
Other innovations
Mira also uses the earthquake bar to do single-hand kneeling windmills, where she holds the weight overhead with an arm while the body performs a range of motions. The exercise is great for building stability in the shoulders.

//www.instagram.com/embed.js
She also does something known as weighted chin-ups while a military jacket loaded with 10kg weights is strapped around her as she hos herself up on bars. These exercises are also great for building up upper-body strength.
Muscle imbalances
The emphasis being placed on Mira’s shoulders is because of what the coaching staff noticed in pre-season assessment.
“When we did a pre-season assessment before this season started, we saw that Mira’s shoulder needs stability because she has been an elite athlete for many years. And she keeps loading on the heavier side. There are muscle imbalances we have noticed in Mira particularly in the shoulder area, rather than the hip area. She used to have issues with the hip and back earlier. But not anymore,” said Hariyali Barot, the physio of the Indian weightlifting team.
“Before 2019, my training routine was simple: warm up karo aur weight uthao (warm up and lift weights). Not anymore,” grinned Mira.