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 practice 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, among young people, it creates dreams and vocations. For adults, it will make them want to join gyms or sports clubs again.” She gives advice to those who intend to start or return to sport.
1Free 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 look objectively at what moments you can free up for yourself and your sports practice”. Once a slot has been determined, add it to your calendar, in order “to make appointments with oneself”.
“It’s important to block out this time as soon as you go back to school, at the same time as the activities of the people around you, so that everyone is also aware that you have freed up time for yourself.”
Alexia Cornu, sports coachto franceinfo
With long days, busy schedules and family life to manage, it’s not always easy to find time. “Everyone is 24 hours in a day, answers 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 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 there, the risk is that you quickly become demotivated,” emphasizes the sports coach.
It invites us to be less ambitious, to stick to 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 at the same time, nothing is a given and the risk is to stop everything,” explains Alexia Cornu.
3One activity, several ways to practice it
The important thing is to “choose an activity that we like, quite simply.” The coach invites you to head towards recreational sports that are enjoyable 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.
“We saw it with the Olympic Games which highlighted a lot of sports that the general public was able to discover. There is so much choice that everyone can have fun playing sports and everyone can find a sport that they like.”
Alexia Cornu, sports coachto franceinfo
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.” Idem for muscle strengthening which allows “to maintain our body, not have pain and feel in shape”recalls the coach. 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 out which elements of the sporting activity will bring us joy and pleasure, This will contribute to the fact that, in the long term, we will continue.”assures Alexia Cornu.
4 Reduce constraints as much as possible
“If it’s too restrictive, the risk is that you’ll 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’s going to generate stress. It has to remain easy and accessible.”
For Alexia Cornu, sport at home is a good idea: “Today, there are a huge number 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, and no need for equipment.” “It’s true that excuses are becoming difficult to find.add yourselfYou can schedule a session before you start 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 sporting activity, “any type of sport”, and physical activity, “moving more every day”. 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 off the metro one stop earlier or get off the bus one stop earlier, always take the stairs and never the escalators or elevators.”
“We can add snacking to physical activity to try to compensate for the fact that we don’t have a sporting activity.”
Alexia Cornu, sports coachto franceinfo
The ideal for someone who is starting out or restarting, adds the coach, is to vary the activities: “It’s about improving your physical activity and then doing 1 hour of walking per week, alone or with your family, while listening to a podcast or chatting with friends… There are several options but it’s interesting to work on your endurance a little. Then, to work on your 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 all the time, 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.