I quite often blog, tweet and post on instagram about what we get up to as an #activefamily and how I’m proud my children are #activekids. They do seem to love exercise, yes, sometimes I have to give them a bit of encouragement but they don’t usually take much persuading. I was curious to find out how they really felt about their own activity and exercise in general so I decided to ask them.
My last #activekids blog was all about the benefits children gain from being active. It proved very popular and set my stats on fire! I admitted that it can be hard to tempt my own children away from their screens sometimes, especially my older boys. There are however tricks I use to help me and I wanted to share some of them with you. They’ll be blissfully unaware that you have a plan! It’s always best to be one step ahead of children, isn’t that always the way with parenthood?! So, when you want to be active as a family, how do you get them to switch off, leave the land they’re building on Minecraft and put on their trainers and join you?
It doesn’t have to be a major health barrier that stops us from being active. Often it’s just everyday life making us feel too tired or a dose of self-conciousness preventing us stepping out the front door. In this, the 4th interview in my Active Women series, I talk to Cheryl Speight who overcomes these types of barriers and reminds us that we can do it too. What have we got to lose?
On 17th April 2017 a special moment in history will be made. Kathrine Switzer will line up on the Boston Marathon start line with a bib number pinned onto her front. The same start line she stood on 50 years before in 1967. In that famous race, the race official tried to manhandle her off the course, simply because she was a woman. She ran on to the finish and began devoting her life to being an advocate for women in sport.
Let me introduce the SlimClip iPhone case. I’m sure many of you will identify with the problems I was having. I needed to find the best iPhone case for running.
‘Can you be at my house at 4.45am in your running gear? We’re going on BBC Breakfast in the morning.’ It’s no wonder my running ladies thought this was some sort of Saturday afternoon prank call!
I’ve had an overwhelming response to my new interview series. Thank you everyone! There are so many of you out there willing to share your exercise journeys and explain how you became active and most importantly how you manage to keep it up despite life throwing things at you. It’s really motivating and encouraging to hear about women who are out there just ‘doing it’. It helps us all through the days when simply pulling on a pair of trainers seems an impossible task.
Welcome to my new ‘Active Women‘ interview series. I’m passionate about helping inactive people to become active. There are just so many barriers stopping women from making exercise part of their lives. Time, health issues and lack of confidence are just three that spring to mind.
The U.K is an ‘uncomfortable’ place to live at the moment with divisions forming in all areas of society. It’s hard to stay positive amongst the chaos and concern. Sport can divide but also has an amazing power to unite. (Let’s not mention the football!) When we turned up to running club the morning after the #Brexit result there was a brief discussion how everyone had voted but we quickly moved on to some crazy running games and for one wonderful hour we moved and laughed and escaped the woes of the world. That’s what I love about 261Fearless, the ability it has to bring women of all backgrounds and beliefs together to enjoy running.
Keeping active when you have kids can be really hard. Carving out time for yourself to get out and do some exercise is a daily challenge. I often use the hashtag #activefamily because I’ve discovered that one of the best ways to get my daily dose of activity is to make it a family affair. This is particularly the case during school holidays and there are a lot of those! With a bit of imagination you can turn any trip into a work out for every member of the family, without them even realising what you’re doing!
