100 in 100: Gaurav Batra- Day 35

Gaurav Batra — “G” to everyone here — walked into Prototype with an exit plan already written.

He signed up for the free 15-day group classes with one quiet goal: survive a few sessions without completely embarrassing himself. Then he’d go home, tell himself he gave it a try, and move on. That was the whole ambition. Make it through, and out.

It’s worth understanding why the bar was set right there. Years earlier, a bad bicycle accident cost G the meniscus in his knee. For close to two years afterward, the pain was bad enough that he had to use his hands to lift and move his own leg just to get dressed. He’d spent so long protecting that knee that the avoidance created its own problems — weakness, stiffness, a body he no longer fully trusted. By the time a barbell, a jump rope, or a box entered the picture, the first question wasn’t “how much” — it was “where’s the line, and how badly will I pay for crossing it?”

But underneath the exit plan was a much bigger reason to stay. His son, Vihaan, is an athlete — he swims, he plays cricket — and G didn’t want to be a spectator to his own kid’s childhood. He wanted to keep up. To run alongside him. To still be in the game, literally, for the moments that mattered. That was the fire he came in carrying. He just didn’t yet believe it could be lit.

What changed everything wasn’t a pep talk. It was a plan. In his one-on-one sessions, Coach Brian didn’t hand G the standard workout and hope — he met the fear head-on and built around it. Box jumps started low and managed, scaled back to something G could trust, with the height added a little at a time. Squats stayed light with the focus on clean movement and the mobility his knee had been missing for years. Every session was designed to prove the same point: your body can do more than it’s been telling you.

From there, the milestones started landing — and they came with people beside him. Coach Jon walked G up the box-jump progression one small step at a time, until jumping, the very thing he’d feared most, became something he could do every round without pain. And then there was the 5K — something G says he never thought he could do and had never even put on a list. When the final stretch hit and he was ready to stop, Coach Gillian didn’t shout from the sideline. She walked alongside him and got him to the finish. He’s the first to say he doesn’t think he finishes it without her.

Two years in, the list of what G can do keeps growing. He plays a full game of cricket again — six to eight hours on the field, three to four of them at full intensity. Box jumps, burpees, the CrossFit Open. He competes against his son now, runs beside him, and the two of them are eyeing HYROX together — father and son, on the same floor. Things that once sat firmly in the “not for me” column have quietly become Tuesdays.

And he didn’t come alone in the end. His wife, Shikha, trains here too. What started as one man’s plan to politely quit turned into a whole family deciding, together, to actually chase being healthy — not as an idea they agreed with, but as something they now do.

MIKE’S NOTE

I got to judge G during his very first Prototype Open. He’d only been with us a short while, and I still remember him between rounds, a little out of breath, telling me how amazing this place was — almost surprised at himself, like he couldn’t believe he was the guy doing this. He never thought he’d be doing something like this.

That’s the part I want you to hold onto. G didn’t arrive certain. He arrived scared of his own knee, with a plan to leave. The difference is he let a coach build him a plan instead of building his own exit — and then he kept showing up while it worked. The 5K, the box jumps, cricket, his son, Shikha next to him — none of that was on the list the day he walked in.

If you’ve ever sold yourself short on what’s possible, read his story twice.

Back then, I could feel that G didn’t believe in himself. To watch that turn around — to see his confidence grow day after day, rep after rep — he’s seeing the return on the investment he made in himself. I’m very proud of him.

— Mike Collette, Founder & CEO