Gurbani Judge, better known as VJ Bani and also Bani J, is an Indian fitness model, actress and a former MTV India presenter. She is known for participating in MTV Roadies 4, Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi 4 and Bigg Boss 10.
1) Bani J grew up mostly in Chandigarh, exposed to people and an environment which gave health and fitness a priority, her mother was a health freak, and was into Yoga and lifting, etc. Her sister was a National level Tennis player.
2) Bani went to Woodstock boarding school, hence, up in the mountains, track and field sports, athletics, hiking, etc were a part of her education and she enjoyed it like anything. She was a part of the school basketball and hockey team.
3) Bani and her sister used to do horse riding a lot since they were kids. Her grandfather used to take them to the long walks along the lake and was very active till his ending days.
4) Her mother would often take them out on excursions like Safaris.
5) When Bani was 19, she moved to Mumbai. She was putting her life together, working to find and enhance herself, grow as a professional and there were no hours off for her, she was continuously on the go when she realized that something was missing in her life and she had to work towards it ASAP.
6) This was the time when she decided to join a gym. Her first gym was Barbarian which was in Lokhandwala at that time.
7) At that time, that gym had celebrities working out there and obviously, Bani was pretty excited to pursue her passion of making a body and living the fittest.
8) Soon, Bani started feeling that her trainer was not pushing her enough for the results, or maybe she was taking it easy with her. She was confident that even if she was soaring in her muscles, she was capable of doing more than what she was doing.
9) From here, Bani developed the urge to know more and do more herself. She could no longer be dependent on the instructional knowledge of trainers to make her achieve which only she knew she could.
10) She realized that she needed to get educated in it. Although at that time, there was no certain direction in fitness, or guidelines, from where she could gather the knowledge and begin somewhere.
11) Her transition to an avid fitness freak began during the days she was often going to Bangalore for Roadie auditions. She had time on hand in between and hence, located a shop there as recommended by people around. There were a lot of magazines on fitness and sports, all international issues in the shop. They were pretty expensive for her given that she already was struggling. But it was her passion so she bought those magazines in bulk for studying them.
12) Bani literally used to spread those magazines in her little room in Mumbai, on her bed and would study them. Highlighting exercises, noting down the names of exercises and workouts, how to carry them out and all on a piece of paper. So much of details went through her process of learning, but she was somewhere satisfied that she was doing her best to improve bit by bit even if that meant being ridiculed for her attempts at learning about fitness in the gym!
13) Not only this, her readings, enabled her to stay motivated all the time, when she went through the stories and interviews of fitness legends from across the world.
14) She used to take cut-outs of the workouts, paste them in her notebook and write that she had to this many reps and this many sets of this one. All manually. She had a very basic phone back then and hence, learnt with whatever she had at hand.
15) She made sure to practice all her knowledge, right from her form, to execution of the workouts on herself in the gym with confidence and care.
She said that nothing comes easy in life and you have to keep that fire and zeal burning inside to reach your call of passion.
