Anyone for Tennis?

I am not fit. At all. Even when I have been at my slimmest I have never really been fit. So I wasn’t that impressed today when my partner suggested we start getting fit on a budget.  Anyone for Tennis? – no, I just didn’t think it was my ‘thing’. I am just not that into exercise.

Anyone For Tennis?

At school I positively loathed fitness. Probably because I was an early developer and showers after games were embarrassing. And then later because I was the fat specky kid who never got picked for teams.

Find Your ‘Thing’

Over the years I have been a member of a gym several times, but have tended to use it religiously for the first month, and then avoid it for the next 11 (although obviously I keep paying the crippling membership fees – hell, who doesn’t do that eh?).

I have tried swimming, but although I am a good swimmer it does bore me doing a hundred lengths a session.

They say you should do something that you enjoy to keep fit. I’ve not got the physique (just yet) for pole dancing. Though if you fancy giving this a try there are a lot of evening groups out there. Anyway, maybe I just need to find my ‘thing’.

My partner on the other hand is very much into keeping fit. He lifts weights regularly and has set up a mini gym in our cellar so that he doesn’t need to bother with the travel or expense of an actual gym membership. We laughingly call it “Jo’s Gym”, and we are all members. Even the cats.

this Idea!

Anyone for Tennis?

No, I wasn’t really jumping for joy when he suggested going to our local park for a game of tennis on the communal tennis courts. I hadn’t played tennis since high school (i.e. 30 years ago), and didn’t see much of a reason to start now.

When he produced two rackets and a packet of balls though, I couldn’t really think of a genuine excuse to not play. ‘How hard could this be?’ I thought, so grudgingly I found myself agreeing to a game.

We are quite lucky that in our local park there are two tennis courts, and I was surprised to find them both empty. School hadn’t broken up, and so there were no children playing. It will be interesting to see if this changes next week when the school holidays start in earnest around us.

I was surprised to find that the courts were in a really good condition. The nets were well kept and tight, there wasn’t very much in the way of litter. So off we started.

New Balls Please!

I was quite shockingly bad. I am sure that my other half won’t mind me telling you how bad that we both were. But the laughter created by how we were totally rubbish at hitting a ball with both backhand and forehand shots was a great medicine in itself.

When we did manage to actually return the ball, we either ended up hitting the ball out of the courts altogether (good job nobody was walking past), into the other court (good job nobody was on it) or into the net.

Now, that may sound like it was a total waste of time. But actually it did mean that some exercise was being done in retrieving even if it wasn’t being done on the court.

And as we carried on playing a strange thing happened; I actually found myself enjoying the whole experience. Yes, it was a little bit embarrassing if someone went past and saw me completely miss-hit a ball with a wild trajectory into a nearby tree, but that was not the point.

We didn’t even try and score points, but tried to increase the number of times we could hit the ball to each other in a rally. By the end of the 40 minute session, we even managed to get a little bit better. And I was sad to stop.

Doing Exercise Without Realising

Looking at my phone, I had managed to clock up about 6000 steps. That is quite impressive for just a bit of a knock-about,and I hadn’t even really noticed that I had done them. The time had gone really fast, and it had been fun. Maybe I have found my ‘thing’. Anyone for tennis?

Perhaps dancing is your thing? Or a bootcamp in a local park? It is worth trying anything until you find the exercise that you don’t even notice that you are doing!

I would love to hear about it if you find your ‘thing’. Do comment below.

Or for more weight loss ideas read Finding the Motivation to Lose Weight

and Is Lack of Sleep Affecting Your Weight Loss?