How Mirabai Chanu won World C'ships silver despite struggling to straighten her arms two weeks before tournament

In an inspiring story of resilience and scientific training, Olympic silver medallist Mirabai Chanu once again proved her mettle on the global stage by winning a silver medal at the 2025 World Weightlifting Championships.

What makes her achievement remarkable is that barely two weeks before the event, she couldn’t even straighten her elbow while pressing a 6-pound bar overhead due to acute wrist pain.

A video posted by Squat University — the renowned sports rehabilitation and performance training platform led by Dr. Aaron Horschig — revealed the behind-the-scenes recovery that paved the way for Chanu’s return to peak form.

“Two weeks before winning a silver medal at the World Championships, Mirabai couldn’t even straighten her elbow while pressing a 6-pound bar,” Dr. Horschig narrates in the video.

“Exercises that had helped an instability injury to the base of her thumb years ago didn’t seem to help this time.”

Interestingly, despite her pain, Chanu had full wrist mobility and could perform yoga-style push-ups pain-free. This observation led Horschig to dig deeper into the root cause.

By analyzing her arm mechanics, he identified that the issue likely stemmed from her shoulder movement and scapular control, rather than the wrist itself.

He then introduced a landmine press exercise — emphasizing elbow lockout and controlled shoulder blade rotation.

The improvement was immediate. Chanu could move overhead comfortably again, allowing her to resume full training just days before the championship.

“We kept this as a part of her warm-ups,” Horschig added. “And the rest is history — a silver medal for Mirabai.”

The 2025 silver medal marked Mirabai’s first major international podium finish in three years, following her silver at the 2022 World Championships in Bogota.

Competing in the 48kg category in Forde, Norway, she lifted a total of 199kg (84kg snatch + 115kg clean and jerk) to finish second overall — her third career World Championship medal. The victory also ended India’s three-year medal drought at the event.

Just a month earlier, Chanu had returned to competition in style by winning gold at the 2025 Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships in Ahmedabad, where she lifted 193kg to secure direct qualification for the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.

This isn’t the first time Squat University has been part of Chanu’s success story. Back in 2021, before the Tokyo Olympics, she also trained under Horschig’s guidance to overcome chronic back issues that had hampered her lifting. The collaboration then led to her historic Olympic silver, India’s first in weightlifting in over two decades.