In these modern times, people love to go to gym for aesthetically pleasing body shape. They all love to drink protein powder shakes and inject steroids, but after using them they become patient to dangerous disease. There is no short cut for the success. One of the best tool by which you can create body to be proud of, while also maintaining extreme power and stamina is INDIAN JORI. Practice of Indian Jori is found, mostly in Vaaranasi, but also in South India and in Maharashtra. Only the Varanasian love to swing the Indian Jori far too much. They all go to AKHARA (akhada, traditional gymnasium) where they swing the Indian Jori in various forms that it is suppose to. The traditional routes always followed as they have been found to be the best for over all strength and wellbeing.
To make it more interesting each Akhara arrange regular competition, in which competitors swing heaviest Jori for maximum amount of repetition. These competitions are all very friendly, playful and lots of encouragement is give from each participants by each other. The competition Joris must be 20kg to 35kg. Over time Jori has become a sport in India, be it if only in small local areas.

In Iran there is a simlar practice and what is known as Persian Meels. Indian Jori and Persian Meels have similarities but difference is that the Jori is narrow in size and have heavy iron rings at bottom which makes Jori easy to load with extra weight and difficult to swing, while the MEELS are thicker in size and it does not have any the iron rings. In Varanasi people say both Meels and Jori are much the same.

Advantages of swinging Indian Jori or Persian Meel:

1. It awesome for stamina and power

2. It make a powerful triceps, biceps and shoulder

3. Improves grip strength like nothing else

4. Develops a extremely strong core

5. Weight loss and fat loss made easier

6. Improves overall flexibility and mobility, especially in the shoulder region

7. Develops a very strong back targeting, traps, lats, rhomboids, erector spinae muscles and all the way down to strong glutes

8. Great for folks with heart condition and blood pressure people, but only light weight up to 10kg

There is great advantage for many sports to adopt the practice of Jori swinging which will help better performance and prevent injury.

A lost of sports that have adapted the practice in to hire sports in India:

1. Cricket

2. Wrestlers

3. Badminton and Table Tennis

4. Hockey player

5. Archery

6. Wind sailing

7. Basketball

8. Rugby

9. Volleyball player

All these various sports have heavy emphasis on their shoulders and Indian Jori swinging will give them the strength and mobility. It is worthwhile adopting using Jori, Meel and even Mace drills in to your daily practice along side all the other forms of lifting you are currently practicing.

My a typical session in the Akahra could look something like this

Warm: with Dands (aka Hindu push-ups), Baithak (aka Hindu Squats) and one handed Gada/Mace swinging with weight to 5-20kg. Then main training movement: Double Indian Jori with 22kg x 5 reps for 30mins and then to 5kg swinging one handed gada/mace 20/30mins.

Author: Gyanshankul Singh 

Location: Varanasi, India

 Email: gyanshankul@gmail.com 

WHATSAPP- +9109695857846

               (PAHALWAAN FONI YADAV IS SWINING HEAVY GADA IN AKHARA KALI BARI)

       (THIS IMAGE IS FROM AKHARA HANUMAN JI VYAYAAMSHALA , VARANASI)

    (THE ANCIENT PIC OF THE JORIS-SEE HOW DID THEY USE HEAVY JORIS TO SWING)

(FAMOUS PAHALWAAN -GHANSHU PAHALWAAN AND  MADHAV GURU JI SUPPORTING THIS ANCIENT   GAME TO SPREAD IT ALL OVER WORLD...THIS PIC IS FROM A COMPETITION OF JORIS)