Balls.ie contributor and Chartered Physiotherapist, Lauren Guilfoyle, chatted to us this week all about the new chapter of the 20x20 campaign, ‘No Proving. Just Moving.’ and why the messaging of the campaign is so important for women in sport, both on and off the pitch. The 25-year-old, who is currently studying a Masters in Sport Exercise and Performance Psychology, talks about life during Covid-19 and her top tips to help you get active.
When I was asked to be an ambassador for Chapter 4 of the 20x20 launch, ‘No Proving. Just Moving.’ I was absolutely delighted. For me, sport is part of my DNA. My involvement with sport started from the moment I left the womb. I’m from a very sporting family here in Clare, my dad and his family would be synonymous with hurling in Clare and I was basically reared on the side of a GAA pitch! It’s all I’ve ever known, and I started playing camogie myself when I was 6 years old and played up until the age of 21 – though I have recently made my return!
People have asked me what the 20x20 campaign is all about and why we need it and for me, it’s huge. I originally didn’t see a need for it until I started experiencing some issues myself as a female in some very male dominated sports. That’s why I choose to share a lot of what I do online. I share the fact that I work as a physio in GAA and that I work in the media, because I feel like we don’t see enough women in those positions or in those roles and every so often, I will get a message from a girl who is doing her CAO and wants to know how I became a physio or how I do what I do and that makes it all worthwhile. I love those messages as it’s lovely to see that someone is looking at what I’m doing and they want to emulate that in their own way and that fits in perfectly into the 20x20 messaging of ‘if she can’t see it, she can’t be it.’
What many people don’t realise is how much we need 20x20. I try to champion female athletes as much as possible through various different ways in my work. The quality of the sport that we see and the quality of effort in the women’s game is just as much, if not more, as our male counterparts and many people do not realise that. While I champion our female athletes, it’s also hugely important for me that we champion all women in sport – be that female medics, female physios, female broadcasters etc. That is what is so great about 20x20, it is about all women, across all codes. I have had some fantastic women in these fields who have all been role models for me growing up. I now want to be that for younger girls – to show them that they can, and they will.
This chapter of the 20x20 campaign resonates even more with me, particularly given my background and career, as it is all about getting women around Ireland up and moving. It’s basically about giving yourself the gift of exercise and creating a new habit with physical activity and this is something that has resonated with me as, for the last couple of years, my personal involvement in sport has dropped off as I’ve been trying to prioritise my studies and my career, so sport has taken a backseat. I’m obviously involved in sport in other ways through my work, but lockdown over the past few months has really brought the love of participating in physical activity back for me. It’s been great in that sense as it’s given me time to almost have my own training camp. It has reintroduced camogie back into my life, and I’ve also gotten a love for other types of sport and physical activity such as running, yoga, resistance training, and tennis here and there as well.
During lockdown, I had very little distractions. In normal life, I spend a lot of time in my car driving different places and that’s a lot of dead time. You could be spending three hours commuting to and from work, so I found I had a lot more free time, so I started running. At first, I was doing it just because it was one of the things you could do during lockdown, but as the weeks went on, I really started to look forward to my runs, as it was time out of the house and it was great to get outside and move, which is what ‘No Proving. Just Moving.’ is all about. I started with 4.5km once a week back in March and last week I hit 23km – divided out over the week, into a 10km run, a 6k run and a 7k run and I was delighted to achieve that. I am trying to work my daily life around my runs because I’ve such a grá for it now.
The most important thing though is to get out there and do something, no matter how small it is. If you’re reading this and thinking, ‘maybe I’ll give exercise a try’, just do it – you won’t regret it. The first tip I’d have for someone starting out is to look internally as opposed to externally. Look at where you are, and where you are starting from. Where I am at now with my running, I wasn’t doing that back in March. I started with a very small goal that was specific to me. While we can take influence from those around us, we need to remember that we need to structure our exercise to be appropriate to us. A really good way of doing that is by breaking down your long-term goal into realistic, small, bite size chunks – think to yourself, what can I do now that’s a little bit better than what I did last week? And then go on and achieve that so that the following week, we can build on that. So instead of looking at it as ‘I’ll never be able to run 10k’ start with 1k, start with 2k.
Making those goals much more achievable and more short-term will feed into your motivation as well. A second big problem people run into is picking up little small niggles and not understanding where they came from, how to avoid them or how to treat them – asking for help is key to starting a new habit with exercise. My last piece of advice would be to find something that you enjoy doing. I used to hate running, but then I started listening to podcasts, and I really enjoy those so that kept me out and running that little bit longer. For you, that might be collective exercise, group exercise, or competitive exercise, whereas for me, I love working out on my own. It’s just sitting down and writing out some things that you like, that you enjoy and build some habits around that. Start small and think about next week, not six months’ time.
The benefits of exercise are what it’s all about. For me, running is a bit of everything. There are physical benefits, obviously, but there are so many mental benefits. One of my modules in college this year was Exercise Psychology and that is where we basically studied the benefits of exercise and physical activity on mental health and there are papers, upon papers of research which illustrate how exercise – both after just one session and a period of time –can help to reduce symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression. There is so much evidence and support out there about the benefits of physical activity– both in the research and anecdotally - if we go for a short walk we do feel better. For me, another benefit of exercise is getting that ‘time out’ from what’s going on in other parts of your life. Getting out to exercise will move your focus from work, or home or whatever is going on in life, to just the simple act of say walking or running, or whatever activity it is you’re doing. This is why I love exercising outdoors, there are a lot more things to look at, notice and see. So instead of focusing on work due tomorrow, I’m instead focusing on nature and what’s around me.
This whole campaign is all about getting people out and moving – I don’t mind what exercise people choose once they’re getting out and being active. I think once the outcome is that we are getting people up and out, and women around Ireland are getting active and moving then I think we have achieved an awful lot.
