How I built a sense of belonging in exercise

My 13 year old self would be horrified

I heard Owen Eastwood speak recently. He’s a Performance Coach and has written a book about Belonging. Read it, it’s brilliant. He works with sports teams across the globe to improve their performance. He talks about the power of belonging as part of this process.

It struck me recently, as I stood in a giant mirrored hall, sweating away, ready to lift a big weight over my head 20 times in a minute, that somehow…I had built a sense of belonging in the world of sport…well, exercise at least.

The Flailing years

• I was a P.E. refuser. I used any excuse under the sun. And never once did my teenage self connect the competitive swimming I was doing outside of school with both my and and my P.E. teacher’s view that I did not belong in his P.E. class.

• I went back-and-forth on exercise through my 20s and 30s: brief stints of running (hello Couch to 5K and Race For Life) and many toxic exercise plans, thanks to 90s gendered tropes - and the resulting displeasure in my appearance for too many decades. I fully bought into the idea that I must ‘earn’ the right to enjoy food.

• Cut to: a busy gym, full of pumped people…and me me and 11 septogenarians. The ‘wellness circuits’ class had an audience adjacent to the Thursday Murder Club (hence why I was there). The woman running the class was supportive, if slightly dismayed when I performed significantly worse than my class pals. I was equally dismayed and mildly humiliated. She suggested I needed to take a class that pushed me more than yoga and swimming. Hmph.

• I tried spin class. Despite recognising that Hyper Sensitivity driectly clashed with the dark / blinging neon lights and piercingly loud music. I pushed through, until I had a hypo so bad I had to sit limply on the bike for the remaining 20 mins of the session (I have Type 1 diabetes). My sense of inadequacy (and weakness from low blood sugars) preventing me from even leaving the room.

Growth…belonging

I finally started working through my body issues a few years ago, thanks to the Body Positivity movement. I reflected on what my body had done for me over the years, how strong it has had to be at times and the idea that perhaps, I could stop punishing it and instead treat it kindly. I considered the idea that exercise could be a gift I gave to myself, if I really thought about the kid of exercise I wanted to do.

I signed up to a Zumba class where I found joy in dancing and moving my body to music. The Zumba teacher’s recognised and celebrated this joy, no matter how confused my movements were. I revelled in becoming the ‘woman at the back of the class who had no idea what she was doing, but had a brilliant time doing so’.

I combined yoga with meditation, stengthening and resting both my body and mind. Rhianwen, the woman running one of these classes also solidified my belief that all yoga teaching should be done with an Australian accent.

And then, a chance encounter with my kid’s nursery teacher led me to sign up to The Bluetits, groups of (mostly, but it’s entirely inclusive) women across the country, teaming up to swim in lakes, rivers and the sea. They gave me a badge on my first swim.

Owen Eastwood talks about the power of telling someone ‘You belong here’. He has used this approach with some of the top sports teams across the world. And it was very powerful - even the name ‘Bluetits’ is funny and makes me feel good every time I tell someone that I am one.

The regularity of swimming once a week, chatting with my fellow Bluetits, about life, cake, the weather and wild swimming kit is a powerful one. My body feels strong when I swim outdoors and feel connected to the world in a way that I’ve never experienced below.

The final leap into ‘peak lycra’

Finally, I did something really scary. I signed up to a Bodypump class. This is about as far away from my comfort zone as I could imagine. Lifting heavy weights, repetitively, in public. Rhianwen was my way in. She taught a class in my gym, through yoga, I already knew I could trust her. I felt little to no fear that I would be shown up for the inadequate gym-goer I felt I was and her classes always made me feel strong. So I picked up the weights, I did the lunges (not always in time to the music) and…realised I was having fun. Even when I’m standing there, sweating, surrounded my mirrored walls and images of people that do not look like me, I feel like I belong in that class.

And that was when I created my criteria for exercise. I’m fully bought into the benefits: the mental health boost, the endorphins, the feeling my body gets when it’s moved, and I’m open to increasingly new ways of doing this, but any exercise I will entertain doing regularly, must:

1. Make me feel strong and / or

2. Bring me joy

Pretty much all exercise is good for your body, right? But it’s not all good for your mind. Not all exercise needs to make me cackle, and sometimes, it’s on me to shift my mindset, but I’ve found a happy place in exercise now and I’m not about to lose it by doing something that makes me feel miserable. So, thank you to the people who made me feel like I belong here and thank you to myself for loosening the chains on myself, my body and my boundaries.