Virat Kohli Gym After 167
Saurav Ganguly once shared how his trainer found Virat Kohli in the gym for hours right after a 167-run innings. That single choice is the clearest picture of Achievement Drive - the EQ trait that keeps stars hungry long after they've already won.
Saurav Ganguly told this story in an interview almost in passing, but I have never been able to forget it. His trainer, once a cricketer himself, watched Virat Kohli walk into the gym one evening after batting for six or seven hours and scoring 167 runs. The trainer was stunned. Kohli's answer to "why are you still training?" is, to me, the cleanest definition of Achievement Drive I have ever heard - and it is exactly what separates stars at your workplace from everyone who quietly stopped growing the day they got comfortable.
In short- Saurav Ganguly narrated how his trainer saw Virat Kohli hit the gym for hours right after scoring 167 runs in Vizag - and was shocked.
- Kohli's reason: he wanted to convert 167s into double and triple hundreds, and that needed a fitness level most players never bothered building.
- This is Achievement Drive - Trait #12 on the EQ (left) side of the Winning Kite - the hunger to improve even after you've already won.
- Most professionals lose this drive through saturation, fear of uncertainty, not tracking progress, and rarely operating in a state of flow.
- You can rebuild it - by treating every achievement as a data point, not a finish line, and by deliberately choosing the next uncomfortable skill gap to close.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
In the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework), the kite has four sides - EQ on the left, RQ on the right, PQ at the bottom, and Success at the top, held up only when all three are in balance. Achievement Drive lives on the EQ side, inside the Self-Motivation cluster, right alongside Optimism and Commitment. It is the trait that keeps pulling the kite upward long after the wind that got you airborne in the first place has died down. Without it, even talented professionals plateau. With it, ordinary-looking careers keep climbing for decades.
The story: a trainer, a 167, and a gym door that shouldn't have opened that evening
Saurav Ganguly was talking about the current generation of Indian cricketers in an interview, and he shared something his trainer had told him. The trainer had been a cricketer himself before he moved into fitness coaching, so he knew exactly what a full day of batting does to a body. He had seen Virat Kohli bat for six to seven hours in Vizag and score 167 runs - the kind of innings that leaves most players wanting nothing more than an ice bath, a meal, and a bed.
Instead, that evening, the trainer saw Kohli walk into the gym.
He was genuinely shocked. He asked Kohli directly: "Virat, you just batted for six to seven hours. And now you're going to the gym?"
Kohli's answer was simple, and it is the sentence I now use in almost every Achievement Drive session I run:
"I want to convert scores like 167 into double hundreds and triple hundreds. And that can only happen if I work on my fitness - if I can train even when I'm exhausted, if I can take my body to the next level."
Sit with that for a second. He had just scored 167. On most scorecards, on most highlight reels, on most WhatsApp forwards the next morning, that is already a triumph. Nobody would have blamed him for resting. But Kohli wasn't measuring himself against the scoreboard of that one day. He was measuring himself against the scores he hadn't made yet - the 200s and 300s that a tired, undertrained body simply cannot produce, no matter how good the technique is.
The context that makes this story bigger than cricket
What makes this even more instructive is what triggered the shift in Kohli in the first place. In 2012, he noticed something important: the level of international cricket had changed. Australian fast bowlers were bowling relentlessly through entire Test matches, breaking teams down not with one fiery spell but with sustained pressure over days. Kohli realised that fitness - not just skill - was becoming the real line between good players and great ones. If he had stayed with the training habits that had worked when he was younger, he would not have survived the demands of the game a few years later.
This is the part professionals miss when they retell this story only as "Kohli works hard." The deeper point is that he read the landscape correctly before it forced him to change. He didn't wait for a string of failures or an injury to tell him fitness mattered. He saw the shift in the environment and adjusted before it became urgent. That is Achievement Drive combined with sharp self-assessment - seeing clearly where the bar is moving, not just where it currently sits.
Think about how many records Kohli holds today. Think about how many years he spent at the top of the ICC rankings, how many matches he has won for India as batsman and captain. By any reasonable measure, he has "made it." But Kohli has never operated from a place of saturation. He operates from hunger. That is precisely what makes him a star performer rather than merely a talented one.
What Achievement Drive actually is
Achievement Drive is the relentless hunger to chase excellence, to set challenging goals, and to constantly improve yourself - even when you've already achieved success. It is not about competing with the person at the next desk. It is about pushing yourself to the next level, against your own previous best.
Most of us start our careers with big dreams. We chase that first job, that first salary hike, that first house, that first car. But what happens after we get there? For many professionals, that first big achievement becomes a saturation point. Comfort sets in. The fire that burned so brightly at twenty-four quietly dims by thirty-four.
Stars at the workplace are different. No matter how much they've achieved, something in them still says, "Nahi, mujhe aur behtar karna hai. Mujhe aur next level par jana hai." ("No, I need to do better. I need to reach the next level.") In Hindi, we'd call this bhookh - hunger. Not physical hunger. An emotional hunger for mastery, for excellence, for becoming unstoppable.
A second cricketing proof: Ashish Nehra's comeback
If Kohli shows Achievement Drive at the peak of form, Ashish Nehra shows it through eighteen years of setbacks. Nehra, India's left-arm fast bowler, dealt with injury after injury across a career that could easily have ended a dozen times. In the 2003 World Cup, defending a modest 250 against England, he took six crucial wickets and helped India reach the final. Years later, battling injuries and out of the side heading into the 2011 World Cup, his drive to come back pushed him into the squad anyway - and in the final against Sri Lanka, he bowled a critical over in the closing moments that helped India lift the trophy after twenty-eight years.
Nehra's story tells you Achievement Drive isn't only for people already at the top. It is equally the force that gets you back up when injury, competition, or plain bad luck knocks you down - the refusal to accept that this is as far as you go.
Why so many capable professionals lose this drive
In my corporate sessions, I ask people directly: when was the last time you deliberately made yourself uncomfortable at work? The silence in the room usually answers the question. Here is why the hunger fades, based on patterns I see across hundreds of professionals:
1. They reach saturation
Most professionals carry one big goal in their head - the first job, the house, the car, a certain salary number. Once they hit it, they relax. "Yaar, bahut ho gaya. Ab aish karne ka time hai." (Enough has been achieved. Now it's time to enjoy.) There's nothing wrong with enjoying success. The trap is mistaking that pause for a permanent stop.
2. They fear uncertainty
Achievement Drive demands you take on challenges, and challenges come loaded with uncertainty. When a company rolls out a new ERP system or asks the team to learn a new tool, a large share of employees resist - not because they can't learn it, but because change is uncomfortable and uncertainty is painful to sit with.
3. They stop tracking their own progress
What gets measured gets improved. Professionals who lose their drive stop setting specific goals and stop tracking numbers. They drift, reacting to whatever the week throws at them instead of pulling themselves toward something. Stars, by contrast, are almost obsessive about feedback - they constantly ask, "How can I do better than yesterday?"
4. They stop operating from flow
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's idea of "flow" is useful colour here - that mental state where challenge and skill are perfectly matched, concentration becomes effortless, and the work itself becomes the reward. Too easy a task breeds boredom. Too hard a task breeds anxiety. Most professionals unconsciously settle into roles that no longer stretch them, and the boredom that follows is often mistaken for burnout, when it is really the absence of a worthy challenge.
Indian business leaders who never let the hunger fade
This isn't just a sportsperson's trait. I see it in business leaders I've met personally. BB Thombare, Chairman of Natural Sugar, Natural Milk & Milk Products, and Ellora Seeds, told me in 2019: "Natural Milk is already one of Maharashtra's top milk suppliers. But our mission is to make it the number one in Maharashtra and India by 2030." Twenty-two years into building his business, and he was still chasing a bigger goal, still taking risks his competitors wouldn't, still designing HR policies that reward excellence and part ways with non-performers.
I see it in Mr. Nitin, a friend and founder of a training company in Pune. When I first met him, I assumed he was simply lucky - a settled business, a strong team, everything running smoothly. Years later, I realised it wasn't luck. Nine years into running a successful business, he still approached digital marketing, sales, and every new software launch with the same aggression he had on day one. Whenever a new tool hits the market, he's the first to learn it, master it, and put it to use.
And I see it in Mr. Karaiadiselvan, Managing Director of CADD Centre Training Services, who started as a trainee in 1992 and built it into the largest engineering design software training institution in Asia. After 28-plus years and 500-plus entrepreneurs mentored every single year, he still shows up hungry to teach, still says feedback is "the breakfast of champions." I began my own career looking up to that energy.
How to test whether you (or your team) still have it
Watch for five behaviours:
| Trait | Has Achievement Drive | Lacks Achievement Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Risk | Takes calculated risks, pushes past comfort | Stays safe, avoids new challenges |
| Goals | Sets ambitious, innovative goals | Resists change, sticks to the familiar |
| Others | Actively supports colleagues and partners | Focused narrowly on self |
| Hunger | Never fully satisfied, always seeking more | Settles once a milestone is reached |
| Information | Actively hunts for new knowledge and feedback | Accepts whatever information comes easily |
Compare Raj and Priya, two IT professionals I use as a case study in workshops. Both learned C++ and Java five years ago. When Python and AI tools became important, Raj said, "I'm already doing well with what I know. Why should I change?" His career has since stagnated, and younger colleagues who learned the new stack have overtaken him in promotions and pay. Priya, faced with the same shift, took online courses after work hours, got proficient within a year, and now leads a team on cutting-edge AI projects. Same starting point. Different outcome. Achievement Drive was the entire difference.
How to rebuild your own Achievement Drive
If Kohli's gym visit teaches anything practical, it's this: don't wait to feel motivated before you act on the next goal - decide on the next goal the moment you land the current one, while the feeling of "not done yet" is still fresh.
- Redefine the finish line before you cross it. Kohli didn't wait until after celebrating 167 to think about 200s and 300s - fitness training that evening was already an investment in the next milestone.
- Read where the bar is moving, not just where it stands. Kohli's shift came from noticing Australian bowlers were changing the game in 2012, years before it became an obvious crisis for less fit players.
- Track real numbers. Whatever your "runs" are - revenue closed, code shipped, clients retained - measure it weekly. Vague ambition without a scoreboard fades fast.
- Choose a challenge that stretches your current skill, not one that breaks it. That's the flow zone - hard enough to demand full attention, not so hard it triggers anxiety and avoidance.
- Treat feedback as fuel, not a threat. The professionals who keep growing, like Mr. Karaiadiselvan, actively chase feedback instead of dreading it.
I train this trait extensively inside my Signature Corporate Training Programs, and it's one of the most requested modules across our corporate training topics - because every organisation has a version of Raj and a version of Priya sitting in the same team, and leaders need to know how to spot the difference before it shows up in the appraisal cycle.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Virat Kohli gym after 167 story?
Saurav Ganguly shared this in an interview: his trainer, a former cricketer, saw Virat Kohli walk into the gym one evening after batting for six to seven hours and scoring 167 runs in Vizag. Stunned, the trainer asked why Kohli was still training. Kohli replied that he wanted to convert scores like 167 into double and triple hundreds, and that could only happen if his fitness let him play at that intensity for longer. He had realised the level of cricket had changed and only fit players could compete at the top.
What is Achievement Drive in the Winning Kite framework?
Achievement Drive is Trait #12 in Avinash Chate's Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework), sitting under Self-Motivation on the EQ (left) side of the kite. It is the relentless hunger to chase excellence, set challenging goals, and keep improving even after you have already succeeded - not competition with others, but a refusal to settle.
How can I build Achievement Drive if I already feel successful?
Stop treating your last win as a finish line. Set the next challenge before you celebrate the current one, track your progress with real numbers, seek out feedback instead of avoiding it, and deliberately look for the skill gap between where you are and where the best in your field already are - the way Kohli looked at Australian pace bowlers in 2012 and decided his fitness had to change.
Why do most professionals lose their achievement drive over time?
According to Avinash Chate, professionals hit saturation once they achieve an early goal - a first job, a house, a car - and comfort sets in. They also fear the uncertainty that comes with a new challenge, stop tracking their own progress, and stop operating from a state of flow, where challenge and skill are balanced. All four together quietly kill the hunger.
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