Fitness, weight loss and life

I’ve had cause to think really hard about my fitness grounding from my sports background in recent weeks. I’ve been working with a couple of people on weight loss and trimming body shape. Neither have the sports training I’ve had, so what parallels could I draw that would be of use to them?

Alongside this, I have been reflecting on my own personal reluctance to follow the exercise programmes given to me by physiotherapists over this winter to help me recover from a broken leg. The programmes have made perfect sense, I have wanted to get back to full fitness and mobility as quickly as possible, and yet………I do them for a few days and then something gets in the way, and then I realise I’ve given up.

I have so wished for someone to coach me through this - to keep me on track and motivated!

I’ve concluded that
1. There are some issues that I cannot coach myself on, and fitness is one of them. Sounds crazy when I’ve been ultra fit for lots of my life, but my metabolism has changed now I spend more time at the computer. In addition the body requires regular routines to settle into if improvement is to be continuous – and I like bucking routine!
2. My failure to do the programmes is NOT lack of will.
3. The issue is not so much fitness as fitting it in with life. Everyone always says ‘it’ll only take…..(5, 15, 30 minutes to do). But every day! That’s a lot of adjustment to make to my life.

So much of sports coaching in this arena is based on monitering and results and seems to be confrontational, ‘succeed or fail’, judgemental. Yet what I really want is someone on my side – to converse with me regularly, to help me talk out the frustrations, to help me find solutions to the myriad of things that get in the way, to help me from feeling overwhelmed by guilt.

Now I find that joining people for a while as a friend in their journey to a different body shape seems to work. I never thought I would be grateful to my broken leg for something, but as so often happens, every cloud has a silver lining.