This Girl Can

Hello Beautiful People,

Something a little bit different for you this week, a proper motivational Monday!

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“This Girl Can is a national campaign developed by Sport England and wide range of partnership organisations. It’s a celebration of active women up and down the country who are doing their thing no matter how well they do it, how they look or even how red their face gets.” This Girl Can

Fear of judgment is stopping women across the country from partaking in and enjoying exercise. This Girl Can aims to put a stop to that and encourage women to get involved, inspiring them to “wiggle, jiggle, move and prove that judgement is a barrier that can be overcome.” And I for one think it’s a bloody awesome!

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I used to love sport. I used to go to athletics training after school, I used to swim (admittedly not that well, although I did make the swimming team once), I was on the netball team (ok it was the B team but it still counts), I used to spend my lunch times playing a cross between extreme catch and rugby, with a tennis ball, on the school field, with my friends (we were a strange lot), I used to go cycling with my Dad quite regularly, I used to go walking in the Lake District with my parents most weekends, I used to go horse riding lots (I even did Pony Club exams I was that keen) and then…I just…stopped.

It didn’t just happen overnight, but gradually I stopped being the 13 year old girl who loved being active and turned into the 17 year old who hated P.E. because she thought everyone was looking at her whilst she made an idiot out of herself. From that I then became the lazy 19 year old who wondered why she was out of breath after climbing the stairs.

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It was only last year that I started getting back into exercise and started running, partly because I wanted to get fit again and partly because of a bet I made with my friend Kate. I’d made attempts to start before, my friend Sarah and I tried to join the uni netball team (not the proper one, just the casual practice one), but the day we turned up it was cancelled. The guy on the front desk said we could use the gym for free instead. Neither of us had been to the gym before and so were slightly apprehensive, this wasn’t helped by the fact that when we walked in the entire gym turned and started at us, clearly thinking we’d got lost and ended up there by accident. Naturally, we ran away and never went back. And it that feeling of judgement that puts so many of us off.

 In January last year I started running regularly for the first time in, well, the first time ever really, and I really enjoyed it.  Running appealed to me to start with because it was something I could do on my own, without there being anyone around to see me and without feeling like I was doing it wrong. I’m so glad that I’ve stuck with it (albeit on and off) because the difference in my fitness and the sense of achievement is brilliant. I become confident enough that I’ve decided to start doing Park Run, but at the back of my mind there is still that niggling feeling of doubt telling me that I’m going to make a fool out of myself.

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That feeling of been stared at by everyone else and that fear of being judged is what puts me and many other women off exercise.  We’re surrounded by advertisements of women doing sport, where the only women featured are pictures of perfectly sculpted and toned health. Women who don’t break a sweat, at all! That’s why This Girl Can is so important and inspiring. It shows women that they can take part in and enjoy exercise no matter what their shape, size or how red and sweaty they get. It creates a united front of women all doing something active that makes them feel awesome.

So ladies, get your jiggle on, grab your trainers, get out there and prove that THIS GIRL CAN!

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Watch the This Girl Can ad here

Love

S

xxx