After a summer punctuated by the Olympic and Paralympic Games, it’s time for the start of the school year and its procession of good resolutions, particularly sporting ones.
The Paralympic Games are coming to an end, students are back at school, sports registrations are open… It’s off to a good start for a year that will perhaps be dedicated to sports for many. Because the Olympic Games encourage the practice of a sport and are beneficial for health, according to a British study . Sports shops, gyms and other sports clubs all benefit from an Olympic effect. For Alexia Cornu, sports coach and expert in female physiology, “the Olympic effect can only be positive. It’s great because, for young people, it creates dreams and vocations. For adults, it will make them want to sign up for gyms or sports clubs again.” She gives her advice to those who intend to take up or get back into sport.
1 Free up time
For Alexia Cornu, the first thing to do after deciding to take up a sporting activity is to “confront the reality of your schedule, open your diary and objectively look at what moments you can free up for yourself and your sporting practice” . Once a slot has been determined, add it to your diary, in order to “make appointments with yourself” .
With long days, busy schedules and family life to manage, it’s not always easy to find time. “Everyone has 24 hours in a day,” says the sports coach, ” there are people who have crazy schedules and who manage to take the time to do sports. We can decide that our health, our body, is a priority.”
2 Set realistic goals
Second piece of advice from Alexia Cornu: “think long-term and don’t get caught up in the surge of motivation that can come at the start of the school year, but use it to help you put things in place properly. And often, the mistake I see is people who set unrealistic goals, who, in the rush, sign up for lots of things at the same time and have goals that are out of proportion to their logistical constraints. And so, the risk is that you’ll quickly lose motivation,” the sports coach emphasizes.
She invites us to be less ambitious, to keep the chosen practice “until December for example, and possibly add an activity in January” . “By adding things gradually, there is a much greater chance that it will work. Because what we have put in place is a given. Whereas if we wanted to put everything in place at the same time, nothing is a given and the risk is to stop everything”, explains Alexia Cornu.
3 One activity, several ways to practice it
The important thing is to “simply choose an activity that you enjoy”. The coach invites you to move towards recreational sports that are fun and good for your health, by asking yourself the questions “what do I like, what do I not like?”, “do I want to be alone or surrounded by people?”, “do I prefer to be inside or outside? “. “You can do a sport to have fun, to aim for performance, to meet up with friends, because you like the coach or with music because you love it” , she explains.
Once you have chosen a sporting activity, there are many options for practicing it. Alexia Cornu takes the example of running: “you can run alone, with friends, with a coach or in a club.” The same goes for muscle strengthening, which allows you to “maintain your body, not have pain and feel in shape ,” the coach reminds us. There are many ways to do it: “body pump sessions with lots of music in gyms with lots of people or very gentle sessions like yoga. There are sessions that you can do at home on your own too with online support…” “Finding the elements of the sporting activity that will bring you joy and pleasure will contribute to the fact that, in the long term, you will continue ,” assures Alexia Cornu.
4 Reduce constraints as much as possible
“If it’s too restrictive, the risk is to get discouraged , warns the sports coach. If it’s on the other side of town, if it’s a pain to park, if the hours are tight in relation to our work, if we don’t have time, it will generate stress. It has to remain easy and accessible.”
For Alexia Cornu, working out at home is a good idea: “Today, there are a lot of online options at all levels, which allow you to schedule a session with the fewest possible logistical constraints, because there are no more travel logistics, no time constraints, no need for equipment.” “It’s true that excuses are becoming difficult to find ,” she adds . “You can schedule a session before starting work or take a break between getting home from work and dinner, which is much easier than going to the gym.”
5 The ideal routine to start or get back into
Alexia Cornu distinguishes between sports activity, “any type of sport”, and physical activity, “moving more on a daily basis” . For someone who really doesn’t have time, she suggests focusing on physical activity: “try to walk more during the day, park a little further away when you go shopping for example, get out one metro stop or get off one bus stop earlier, always take the stairs and never the escalators or elevators.”
The ideal for someone starting out or restarting, adds the coach, is to vary the activities: “so it’s about improving your physical activity and then doing 1 hour of walking per week, alone or with family, listening to a podcast or chatting with friends… There are several options but it’s interesting to work on endurance a little. Then, to work on muscle building, do two 30-minute sessions of exercise by doing a mix of muscle strengthening and stretching. It can be in the form of yoga, pilates, muscle building. There are plenty of options there too.”
“Stretching is very important to work on flexibility,” explains Alexia Cornu, “because we lose a lot of flexibility with age and it is very harmful to the body in the long term, because we lose mobility, and therefore autonomy. And muscle strengthening is essential because we lose muscle mass permanently if we do nothing the metabolism decreases, there is more fat storage, pain appears…” More physical activity, endurance, muscle strengthening and stretching are therefore the ingredients for a successful return to sport.