I hated sports day as a kid

How my relationship with exercise changed

I ran in the dad’s race at sports day again this year. This is the third year I got to do this, and for the first time, I wasn’t nervous.

When I was a kid I didn’t like sports day. I didn’t think I was any good at the things they were asking us to do (particularly running, I hated running), I couldn’t stand getting hot, and I was excruciatingly aware of the idea of people watching. Seeing me fail. It felt embarrassing, or humiliating even.

However, as an adult, my relationship with exercise has changed. I actually enjoy exercise now. I quite like getting hot (specifically when exercising, the rest of the time I would rather not be sweating, thank you very much).

However, this has been a gradual process. I got more into exercise in general towards my late teens and this continued, but even a few years ago I still felt nervous going into the dad’s race. The assumption that I would be terrible, that people would laugh or judge and that I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

But now I don’t even really have that physical feeling of nerves (well, maybe a little, but not to the extent that it got in my way). Now, you could ask me to have a go at most sporting events in front of a group of people and my nerves about it would be low enough for me to give it a crack and to actively enjoy myself.

I shared some of this on an Instagram story recently and someone asked me if I would share a little about how this happened. I would say that it hinges on these things:

· Questioning beliefs

· Space to learn and experiment

· Building tolerance

· Realistic expectations

Questioning beliefs

A big part of my work as a therapist is helping people to recognise and question beliefs that they hold about themselves that might not be fair. Let’s look at some of the beliefs that were getting in my way.

I’m not good at sports

The message that I had in my head that I wasn’t good at sports was never fair or accurate. I can say this pretty objectively because while it is true that I came last in cross country one year and I was pretty rubbish at football, I was also county champion in trampolining at about the same time. That isn’t being bad at sports. It is not being great at certain types of physical activity, but being better at others.

Recognising this has helped me to recognise the skills and ability that I do have, not just seeing the things that I find harder. I am pretty flexible and nowadays I am also quite strong. Those things are valuable skills, even if they still don’t make me a particularly fast runner!

I will never be good at the things I am bad at

I wasn’t a good runner or football player when I was young, but of course I wasn’t. I didn’t do those things regularly. I didn’t enjoy them and I avoided them. If you don’t have an abundance of natural ability, of course you aren’t going to be great if you don’t get a chance to practice, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better at things with time, patience and training, if you want to.

People will criticise and ridicule me if I am not very good

At school, people do laugh and ridicule. Some people do that because they are actively mean, but also within healthy and close friendships, people tend to mock each other. As a kid I had a bit of both, and I would really take it to heart. It left me with an unfair impression as an adult that people were watching my every move, waiting for me to slip up so that they could laugh at me. However, in reality, mean people do exist, but the majority of people don’t think any less of you if you aren’t brilliant at something. Your best friends can point out your performance and laugh, but usually they are trying to laugh with you rather than to make you feel bad about yourself.

Some of the questioning of these beliefs came from thinking about them, but really the most impactful thing was this:

The space to play

In my mid-teens there was a period of time where I had retreated and become very inactive, but a day came when I decided to change that (more on this moment next week). Where I started was just exercising on my own.

The first thing I did was start riding my bike. I had always loved riding my bike and I still do. Something about just going as fast as you can and feeling the breeze. There was no expectation, no goal, no timing, just something to do.

Then I did some sit ups and push ups on my own in my room. I just wanted to see if I could do them, because in PE I really couldn’t. It turned out that when I wasn’t worrying about it, I could do a few (but still only a few) but as I practiced, I saw that I got stronger and that I could do a few more.

When I went to Uni, the guys I lived with wanted to go play some casual football and when they asked me to play, I decided to say yes. These guys hadn’t seen me play. I had told them I wasn’t any good and as it turned out, they really didn’t care. There was no pressure at all, and the more we did it, the more I enjoyed it. I actually learned things, too. Because I had given myself permission to be a beginner, when I heard one of them talking about what he had been taught about shooting, I asked him to show me, and he did.

After Uni, when I was living on my own and didn’t yet have a group of people to do things with, I decided that I needed to get out of my tiny little flat more than I was doing, and that I needed some exercise because I was feeling pretty sluggish. For some reason I really cannot remember, I decided I would go for a run.

There was zero chance of anybody I knew seeing me. I had very low expectations. I just thought I would see what I could do and if I could push it a bit (like I had with the push ups). I had got into podcasts and it was a good bit of listening time. To begin with, I could genuinely only make it to the end of the road before I had to walk. I started to see if I could make it a bit further each time. Eventually, I could run a three-mile loop without walking. Not fast, but I could do it.

Having a safe place to try things out, experiment and learn is a huge part of this. There have been so many more. A casual weekly football game I was part of for years where I live now. A friend of mine showing me some calisthenics routines which I now love and do regularly and which means that I can now do proper pull-ups (something little me felt completely incapable of).

All of that meant that I learned things and I got fitter, which meant that actually I wasn’t as worried about being “bad.” However, when it comes back to the dad’s race and why I wasn’t as physically nervous any more, there are a couple of other things that helped me along:

Realistic expectations

I have short legs in comparison to my body. To the point that when I was measured for my first suit, the guy doing it could not believe how short my inside leg was. This is something that doesn’t make me feel self-conscious, it is just a fact and it amuses me. However, it might also be one reason (not the only) that even with practice and training, I am not the fastest runner there is.

I am still not a fantastic football player either. My first touch, dribbling and shooting aren’t great and I tend to panic on the ball. I promise you I am not being over-critical here, I am just being realistic. It doesn’t put me off wanting to play.

However, realistic expectations work the other way, too. It’s no good being able to pick up on all your faults if you can’t also acknowledge your strengths: I have decent stamina and I will always track back. I am a decent defender and while my shooting and dribbling isn’t the best, it is so much better than it was. As a runner, I am not the fastest, but I am not the slowest either.

One thing that has helped me with my relationship with exercise is being more realistic with myself. When I first started playing football, I would be so annoyed with myself because my first pass or touch would be poor and I would be angry. However, I realised at one point that I was expecting myself to not make any mistakes, which wasn’t realistic. Instead, I practiced just setting myself one realistic aim in each game. A couple of good touches. One or two moments where I took my time to pick a pass. Doing this helped. I could allow myself to be at the level I was at without being harsh to myself.

With the dad’s race: I could set the expectation of just running the thing the best that I could. Try to get a decent start (a bit of a weakness in my running) and try to enjoy the experience. That helps.

Building tolerance

Finally, the thing that eventually lets your body relax (not just your mind) is repetition. You might already be convinced in your mind that things are going to be OK, that you are not as bad as you think you are, and that people aren’t going to ridicule you, but your body might not be convinced.

The more you put yourself in that position, the more you give it a go, the more evidence your body has that things are actually OK, that it isn’t as big of a deal as you think it is.

You can’t get that without doing it.

Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. There’s more to say, but if I were allowing myself to drop just one more thing into this it would be: starting with something you actually like. Those first few bike rides were a big deal. It didn’t feel like “exercise,” it just felt like going for a bike ride.