By: Ella Glover | Metro UK
Before Jasmine Thomas took up surfing, her mental health was at a low point.
In the midst of the pandemic, she found herself slipping into a depression.
‘It was nice to have Zoom calls with friends when we couldn’t do it in person, but one thing led to another and the next minute I’m drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and taking drugs,’ says Jasmine, 24.
‘And all because I was bored and too lazy to leave the house for my daily exercise. In the end, I had to start therapy.
‘The pandemic was a real turning point in my life. It made me realise I needed to focus on myself, my health and my happiness and to stop trying to please everybody else.’
After saving up during lockdown, the Welsh born Jasmine embarked on an 18-month trip to Asia back in 2022. This is where she discovered the sport that would ‘save [her] life’: surfing.
‘I’m happiest when I’m by the sea and there’s good weather,’ she says.
‘It doesn’t feel like exercise because I’m having fun even on the bad days.
Jasmine found surfing through her boyfriend, who is an avid surfer.
‘I feel the time passes so quickly, you go in thinking you’ve only been in the water for 30 minutes and then next thing you know it’s three hours later and your arms are tired from all the paddling.’
She quickly went from doing zero exercise to surfing everyday, and even when she can’t surf due to the weather conditions, she is still motivated to stay healthy for when she’s ready to get back on the board.
On top of that, she says, surfing gives her purpose: ‘I get excited about my weekends now knowing that I’m going to head to the beach, exercise, meet up with friends, eat food and watch the sunsets.
‘Now my boyfriend and I go to the beach and surf together, hype each other up, helping each other to improve techniques and just generally build a strong bond whilst creating memories.
‘It’s funny because I travel to see the world and culture, he travels because of the surf spots, so surfing has made us decide a lot of our travel locations from Thailand, Bali, Australia, Portugal, Morocco.
‘I guess it’s not just about the exercise, it’s everything that comes with it.’
Government guidelines for adults aged 19 to 64 suggest getting at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week, as well as two days of strengthening activities for all the main muscle groups.
But not everybody enjoys generic forms of exercise like strength training in the gym or running.
It goes without saying that exercise is difficult, especially for beginners, but if it’s boring and unfulfilling, too? It’s no wonder that just one in 20 adults in England exercise their muscles enough.
But, finding something you love to do, be it a team sport, a community-based exercise class, a niche form of exercise or something else, can help you to reframe exercise as something fun — the physical benefits are simply a bonus of doing something you enjoy. Doing so can help to reframe exercise from something that you have to do – a chore – to something that you want to do: a privilege.
‘Reframing exercise gives us the ability to see where exercise can be an addition to our lives, beyond a single target or objective we are looking to achieve,’ psychologist and wellbeing consultant Lee Chambers previously told Metro.co.uk.
‘It also helps us see the opportunities exercise can provide and be more open to trying new experiences and meeting new people.’
He continued: ‘It can ignite your competitive side, distract you from the feeling of exertion, help you build that social network that provides so much more than moving your body, and also helps you to harness the benefits of play, connection and enjoyment.
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‘It can shift from punishment to self-care, from an obligation that you dread to an activity that you gain joy from.’
Since she was young, Sarah Rose Bright has had a tricky relationship with exercise.
‘I was never good at competitive sports and I was always one of the last kids picked in the team sports sessions [at school], so I started bunking off classes,’ the love, sex and intimacy coach tells Metro.co.uk. ‘Because of that I didn’t have a great relationship with exercise.’
Beyond walking – which she has always loved – and practising yoga ‘on and off’, Sarah, 50, from Somerset, couldn’t find a method of exercise that would stick.
That is until 2012 when, at the age of 39, Sarah discovered chi gung (also known as qigong), a traditional Chinese energy practise involving a system of coordinated body-posture and movement, breathing, and meditation.
Sarah first started practising chi gung through public classes taught by her now-fiance, Graeme.
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When his classes stopped, Sarah found another chi gung instructor, Barry Spendlove, and stuck with him for 10 years.
‘All the exercise I’ve done over the years from dancing classes to sports at school, had an element of competitiveness or goal attached to them, such as playing in the school tournament or dancing in the school show,’ says Sarah.
‘I never enjoyed that pressure.’
Conversely, Sarah feels she is able to practise chi gung simply because she loves it and it feels good.
‘It is so relaxing,’ she adds. ‘Even doing a few minutes can transform how I feel.’
Over the years, Sarah has grown extremely passionate about chi gung, even training as an instructor, not because she wanted to teach it but because she loved it so much and wanted to keep learning about it.
Sarah also uses chi gung as a motivator to make other healthy changes in her lifestyle, like only drinking alcohol around two times per year and taking long walks in the countryside, doing yoga and weight training in the week
Now, at the age of 50, Sarah says exercise is more important than ever.
‘As I headed to 50, my body started to change in gentle ways, and these made me aware of how important it is to look after my body,’ she says.
‘As someone who didn’t look after their body for years, it is now a priority to me.
‘Whenever I’ve met people in their 70s and 80s who practice to chi gung regularly, they have a sparkle and a vibrancy that is unmistakable.
‘I want to be that person in my old age.
‘I plan to do chi gung for as long as I physically can.’
Lexi Thawley, 27, a PhD student from Manchester also found motivation for other, more generic, forms of exercise through something a little more niche – training in martial arts.
‘I find that now when I do strength training or cardio, I’m doing it because it will actually improve my ability in something I care about, not just because I feel like I have to,’ she says.
Lexi says she had a ‘complex’ relationship with exercise for most of her life.
‘I really enjoyed exercising, but I didn’t feel very confident about it, or about my body in general,’ she says.
‘I didn’t have a great relationship with my body growing up.
‘I’ve always been bigger and I think growing up in the early 2000s, when there was such a toxic culture around body image, definitely played into it.
‘I wasn’t very present in my body and I felt a lot of shame about how it looked and how it moved, so I just thought sport wasn’t for me.’
This all changed when she started going to Brazilian jiu jitsu, mixed martial arts (MMA) and kickboxing lessons around three years ago.
‘Not only is it great for improving your confidence and empowering you, especially because you know how to defend yourself, but people are also open about the condition of their body, whether that’s in terms of injuries or making weight for competition.
‘Conversations about weight and body image and how that affects you in sports can be quite taboo, and the fact that they’re normalised within martial arts is really nice.’
On top of that, Lexi has been able to meet and connect with so many different people through her sport, something she doesn’t think would have been possible without it.
‘It’s really cool, both in terms of enjoyment as well as having fun and making friends from all walks of life,’ she says.
‘This sport really allows you to connect with people in a way that I don’t think a lot of other forms of exercise do.’
This is the thing about finding an exercise-based hobby — it’s about so much more than just exercise. From finding community to developing a passion, there are so many hidden benefits to seeing exercise as more than just something to tick off a list.