Lakshya Sen heads to Austria for physical assessment

Aiming to be in the best shape for the upcoming tournaments in the BWF circuit, India’s Lakshya Sen on Sunday left for Austria for a detailed evaluation of his body.

The 22-year-old from Almora, who had come close to winning an Olympic medal in Paris before finishing fourth, will undergo a series of tests at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre in Salzburg to get a detailed evaluation to rev up his fitness and game.

“Lakshya is going to Austria to do some physical assessment. There is a good sports institute there, where he wants to do some physical exercise. He left today and will be back after a week,” Vimal told PTI.

Lakshya is accompanied by his trainer, Gaurav and a 15-year-old junior shuttler Nishchal Chand from Uttarakhand to help him keep abreast with the game during the week.

“The tests will focus basically on specific strength aspects. Many of the elite athletes go and get themselves tested there. We had consulted Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala for all his niggles and injuries.

“Right now, he is fine but before he really starts going full-fledged, it is important for him to get the right physical training, and unless the strength and conditioning program is really spot on, he can get injuries. So we have to find the right things to do.” Lakshya is likely to play in the Hong Kong Super 500 and China Open Super 1000 next in late September this year.

Badminton is a physically demanding game and Vimal feels Lakshya has to keep working on his overall fitness, especially considering the kind of game that he possesses.

“He needs to definitely get better on fitness aspects, especially the speed, endurance and other things he needs to work on.

“Because the game he plays, it’s very fast-paced. He has to defend a lot and then he converts the defence into offense.

“When he’s playing with the wind, he needs to keep putting the shuttle down, come into the net, tumble at the net, so up and down… those sort of things it takes away a lot of your energy. So, he needs to get super fit or develop the ability to control the drift.”