February 5th 2020 marks National Women & Girls In Sport Day and being both an educator and an athlete, this is now something that is incredibly important to me. So, I got some friends together to discuss some key issues that bother us, what we think is being done well and what we’d like to change. Check out the reason behind this and the full discussion we had below.
Growing up I didn’t do any sports and I didn’t get serious about being fit until I was in my twenties, so when I began I felt totally overwhelmed by pretty much everything; it felt like I was never going to get anywhere. I didn’t know what any of the exercises I was supposed to be doing were and I wouldn’t have had a clue how to put a workout together so I just bounced between cookie cutter gym programs and fitness classes that made me feel overweight and uncomfortable because I am so damn uncoordinated. (This was before Sean was a coach and before he’d really started his journey so I didn’t have the help I now have from him either). I stuck to weights initially because my cardio was so poor. I refused to run because I didn’t want to ‘lose muscle’ but at that stage I didn’t actually have any muscle to lose and still had a lot of body fat to shift to get down to a healthy weight. But I was totally uneducated and it’s safe to say I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
Missed Opportunities
I also realise now just how much I missed out on in my childhood years: the time I missed building a fitness base; the lack of team sports that could have taught me so much about social situations; the commitment and dedication that comes with training for a specific goal. So now I try to use my role as a teacher to instil the importance of being healthy and active in the children I teach. I plan lessons about nutrition and the importance of feeding your body and I encourage them to find ways to be active that they enjoy. I also spend a lot of time talking about my races and the training I do, the mindset that comes with that, the mistakes I make along the way and why I love it so much. Sometimes I worry that I am boring them with it but when there’s been a race over the weekend it’s the first thing they ask about on a Monday. Last year I got nearly half my class to complete a Spartan Kids race and took a young man in my year group around the adaptive heat - one of the most rewarding moments of my teaching career.
I believe it is as important to grow this understanding in boys as it is in girls and I make sure that I teach the importance of equality both within sport and in the wider world regularly in my classroom. But, in celebration of Girls & Women In Sport Day, this blog and our discussion have got a slightly more specific focus.
Finding out about the day (See the full campaign: here) lead me to do some more research and I wanted to discuss what I had found to see if this was an experience that others had growing up, especially when I had little experience in this area. Luckily for me, I have a group of amazing ladies in my life so I got together with some of these friends to discuss some key issues, how they impacted us growing up and how we see society developing now. The panel of ladies all dabbled with many different sports in their youths, from just for fun kayaking to high level competitive gymnastics, and now, amongst other passions, they all race OCR races with me. Click below to listen to the full interview and the insights of these amazing ladies. Please do leave us a comment with your thoughts and experiences, we’d love to hear from lots of both women and men!
The panelists:
Each one of these ladies inspires me in so many different ways and I feel very lucky to call them all my friends. They’re all very approachable so if you want to find out more about them check out their instagrams below.
Liane Packman - @handstand_liane
Lucy Mathews - @lucymathews_ocr
Ilona Jade Errington - @ilonajte
Emily Astiz-Black - @emilyastiz
Plus me… Jessie Montague - @smiley_spartan_racer
Jessie x