Exercise hurts! But competing doesn't?

I thought I was in reasonable shape, albeit "obese" according to the BMI classifications (there again, some NFL players are in that category, and they're physically at the peak performance).

Today, I turned up at the training session for a local Sunday League football** club, intent upon fulfilling my New Year's Resolution to involve myself in some sporting activities this year. As you may have determined from the title of this post, I was quickly disabused of my notions about my physical condition. Nevertheless, I forced through it and endorphins and whatnot (possibly including dopamine, according to this programme) came to the rescue. I commented to myself on the way home, "It's a good job I'm a masochist, otherwise that would have to count among the worst ideas I've had this year!"

That dopamine thing is perhaps particularly relevant, because I noticed something: I struggled through warm-up and early on, but as soon as we were split into two groups to compete against one another, something happened to me and it was like a version of my Red Beast of Fire awoke (link NSFW, and trigger warning for discussion of violence in a sexual context).

You see, give me a team and a part to play, and an enemy ("opponent" does not fit my attitude towards the team I'm playing against - I truly believe sport is a form of warfare!), and it does not matter how knackered I am, how much my body was screaming for release just a few seconds ago. I now want to compete (do battle) and will put everything I have and more into doing so. There were people with more pace and fitness than me, and I was valiantly marking them as best I could. Enemy's got the ball and I'm nearest? I charge him down, try to win it (no ability to tackle, no chance of succeeding, but I tried anyway) - at least make the beggar play the ball instead of standing there and picking his pass. My team has the ball? I'm working hard to find space and give my team-mate a passing option, and then if I receive the ball, I'm passing it and dashing off to make the next option available (or, more likely, trying to win the ball back from the enemy who actually received my wayward pass!).

All of this required pushing my body into action, except it needed no push as such, it wanted it just as much as I did. It was bloody hard to move (especially by the end of practice) but the urge to fight for every ball was still there and I would not slow down when there was a ball to compete for.

So, it hurts. A lot. I really think it might be a bad idea to try again next week. But it is tempting, because competing, doing battle man-to-man in that controlled environment, is actually worthwhile for me and the best way to get me to exercise.

I regret that I never took much notice of sport when I was growing up. I resent that I was effectively discouraged from sport by the culture in school (I wasn't actually picked last most times, but second or third last always), and that PE lessons were treated as "get the kids running around, coach a few of the better kids, give the others a little bit of basic technique and let them muddle through". Who knows whether I might have been able to play half-decently, had I been given the coaching to improve on what little I had to start with? Maybe I never had the ability to learn to play a sport well, but without the encouragement to try, and the tools to do it with, what chance did I have?

I could have done better - as I briefly mentioned discussing pain before, playing in goal in (field) hockey PE lessons at school, I was not bad, and I was selected for that because I was (a) dumb enough to say yes and (b) had at least some ability at it (and once or twice, I got special treatment by being given goalie's pads!) Supposing I had been trained up to play a position at football (any code) - might I have engaged with sport properly at a younger age? Might my life have turned out differently? (Probably not Premiership, but maybe League 2 or Conference National, I may be allowed to dream!)

One final thought: obesity epidemic, "lack of community spirit" - they suggest that team sports involvement might help with these. Perhaps it would, but not if it's run in an exclusionary way, in the way that "last person to be picked" epitomises (and that is a staple of comedians' routines today, so it implies that it's still going on). To forge a team, you need everyone to feel like they have a role to play and a reason to fight for it. (Again, if people feel like they've got no reason to fight for their community, they'll feel no problem with fighting against it.) So, you build it from the ground up, from early on, get kids to understand what the team is relying on them to do - and make sure that the other kids know that they can and should rely on them (even the scrawny/tubby kid who would have been picked last). It's what I like about American football as a teaching sport: the roles are diverse, but interconnected so that there's a role for you whatever shape you are. In short, find a way to help kids feel good at something in sport. I'm pretty sure (call me foolishly optimistic and idealistic, if you want) that most kids, when they feel good at something, want to do better at it and want to do better than their peers at it - and that leads to practising for fun, not for duty. Which leads to exercise.

Of course, the catch to this is that to engage at that level - of actual position training instead of generalised PE - requires a fair amount of one-to-one tuition, at least to get it started, for the kids who need more help with technique to overcome issues of being less physically developed, for example. And that means you need more trained PE teachers who actually know what they're doing with respect to the positions they're coaching. That, in turn, means spending money on wages.


**We're talking here about the sport characterised by the almost exclusive use of the feet to control the ball (hence "foot"+"ball"), and not any of the games where you're allowed to carry it in your hands and throw it to each other. Some of you may know this sport as "soccer" **shudders**.