When Kuwar Amritbir Singh failed Mathematics in his board exams in 2019, the Gurdaspur boy could have easily become a drug addict like many youngsters in the state of Punjab. Instead, he made it his life's mission to dedicate himself to fitness and be an advocate for an addiction free Punjab. At 23, Amritbir has three Guinness Book of Records entries, 33 World Records, an action film, and a TEDx talk to his credit, all without ever stepping into a formal gym.
How It All Started For Kuwar Amritbir Singh
A 19-year-old Kuwar Amritbir Singh was distraught when he faced a minor setback in his Class 12 board exams. As a result, his family stopped talking to the young boy, growing up in Umarwala, a village in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, where drug addiction, particularly among youth, was rampant at the time. Kuwar always had a fascination for fitness and bodybuilding though, and now that he had time on his hands, he decided to turn his passion into something more concrete. However, coming from a modest background, he lacked access to a proper gym, formal training, equipment, and a proper diet plan.
"I would do hundreds of push-ups in a day, but beyond that I had no idea what to do, as there was no one to guide me," he says.
After reading biographies of people like Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Udham Singh, and Dara Singh, Kuwar realised that none of these heroes had a gym or a trainer; they all worked hard and trained themselves. So he decided to hone his craft through sheer hard work and determination. His family, initially at least, was very resistant to the idea of him becoming a professional bodybuilder and wanted him to study and get a job.
Realising he would have no financial support from his family, in early 2020, Kuwar took it upon himself to build a "desi" homemade gym on his terrace. He scavenged the whole neighborhood and took home all the weights he could find. Plastic bottles, metal scraps, rubber tubes, waste cement, rusty metal rods, bricks—whatever came in his sight, he forged it to make weight equipment.
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“I have never been formally trained. To be honest I couldn’t afford it either. I watched videos on youtube and taught myself how to build a gym. I used all sorts of material at my disposal and made weights out of them. I built dumbbells of cement, used bricks to make equipment and made the terrace of my home into an open air desi gym,” Kuwar says.
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From Backlogs to Record Books
Later that year, Kuwar had his first breakthrough; he became the youngest bodybuilder to perform the most knuckle push-ups in a minute and etched his name into the India Book of Records. Kuwar would go on to make world records after world records. Four years later, the number stands at 33, three of them in the Guinness World Records and the rest in the Limca Records, India Book of Records, and others.
‘Punjab has had many wrestling and body building heroes, sadly now people associate the state with drugs and gangs. I wanted to change this perception. That was one of the motivations for applying for records, the other one was to make my parents proud’ says Kuwar.
Although the accolades made Kuwar a recognizable face in his community, there was no money coming in as yet. In fact, Kuwar says, a lot of the time he would have to spend his own money to register for an award, and after a while, there was pushback from the family as well.
“Despite making a few world records, I wasn’t earning any money. And hence the support from the family wasn't that encouraging. They wanted me to focus on my studies and get a job. I would often be told I was wasting my time,” he adds.
Road To Fame & Success
The path was not easy. It was only after a few local and national dailies that covered Kuwar in 2021, he had begun to gain a fair amount of traction on social media. As a result, a video content platform, Hello App, called him and asked Kuwar to be a contributor for the app and earn some money. He was asked to upload videos of his "desi" workouts and push-ups on the platform, and for each video, he would be paid a certain amount.
“I would make five workout videos a day and post them. They (Hello) said I would only be paid if the video featured in the ‘trending’ section. In the beginning, the videos didn’t work much. But later, as I put more effort into them, they started featuring and I started getting paid. It wasn't much, but it was a start, and it also helped in changing the perception of my family towards bodybuilding,’’ Kuwar says.
Unfortunately for Kuwar though, the app was banned by the Government for being of Chinese origin, and he lost all his earnings. He says he would not leave his room after the ban. All seemed lost, and Kuwar, naturally, felt demotivated.
2022-2023: The Years of the Invisible Grind
After the initial success in 2021, for the next couple of years, Kuwar's career seemed to be stuck in limbo. Each record book he approached either asked for money or outright rejected him for having a faulty technique.
"Those two years (2022-2023) were the hardest. I would wake up, put in all the effort, and there was nothing much to show for it. My family got impatient with me as my education was impacted too," he says.
Just then, in late 2023, when Kuwar was about to give up and shift his focus completely towards his education, he got an email that changed his life. It was from the Guinness World Records, and it said that they had officially recognised his record for most push-up claps in one minute.
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Creating a Legacy
Since then, he has gone on to make 33 world records in total. Apart from all the records, Kuwar also became the 2nd Runner-Up of the show "Punjabiya Di Dadagiri," hosted by former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh on Zee; debuted as an action hero in the Punjabi Film Industry and was invited as a TEDx Speaker, but he says his parents are most proud of the fact that their son is pursuing a Master’s degree in Political Science.
Kuwar also enjoys a decent fan following on social media. As of today he has 247 thousand followers on Instagram alone. He is often seen advocating for the eradication of drug addiction among the youth in Punjab.
According to a blog by Guinness World Records, Kuwar Amritbir Singh attempted the world record to inspire Indian youths and achieved it. Besides the world record, Singh is the youngest athlete to perform a maximum of 118 Knuckle Push-ups in one minute at 18, performed 35 superman push-ups in 30 seconds for the India Book of Records and received a nomination for the Karmaveer Chakra Award.