It’s Never Too Late to Start

It’s not too late to start your journey into fitness.

Maybe you didn’t like running at school. Maybe running around in a polo shirt and shin guards made you feel self-conscious, with a mouth full of gum shield and spit. Maybe you didn’t like being shouted at for shuffling your feet when you were passed the ball in netball. Maybe, even sadder, you did like PE at school, but then a snide comment from an equally insecure kid, or an ill-informed teacher made you give up on that feeling. Maybe you’re from a family who has never really seen the value of exercise for exercise’s sake, and so you never got the chance to try when you were younger. You can’t change the past.

Maybe now, in the present, exercise seems like something other people do. Thinner people, fitter people, people with more time in the day. Those feelings of inadequacy come rising up when you think about moving you body in front of people. Your body seems foreign to you – you’ve no idea what it’s capable of, but it doesn’t seem like much. Maybe you’d like to start exercising, but it seems too expensive, and you don’t really know where to start. You’ve “tried running once”, and you went off too fast, felt sick and hot, embarrassed again. You stopped in the street, tears pricking and heart pounding, hoping no-one could see.

Those first, bad experiences of running don’t class you as “just not a runner”. You didn’t pass your driving test the first time you sat behind the wheel, either. You took it slow, learning more each time, until you felt comfortable. That’s what you need to do with exercise – ease yourself in, be it running or swimming or dreaded netball.

There’s a great slogan from This Girl Can – “Why not make your first run, a walk?”  Runners didn’t start out running, and nor do you have to. Catch up with a friend with a brisk walk in your neighbourhood – if you can’t keep chatting, you’re going too fast. Hundreds of people just like you are just starting out on the journey too. And they felt scared, and tired, and intimidated too.

Just because you haven’t done it yet, doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It’s not too late to start.

This post is brought to you in conjunction with KiQplan. The KiQplan Race for Life app is one helping of running buddy, one helping personal nutitionist with a whole side portion of Kick up The Bum. It give you a full training plan from absolutely no running, to 5k or 10K, incrementally upping the ratio of walking to running over the course of twelve weeks til you’re flying. It works even better paired with a fitness device, as you can track your activity throughout the day, not just over the period that you’re exercising. By keeping an eye on your overall activity, you’ll begin to make the step changes that will see you radically change your life for the better.