Typically, my life is dominated by netball. It determines my whole schedule: when I must train, when I can rest, and when I can have free time to spend in almost any way away from the game. I have always been a person that thrives off of a routine, and although much of my formal obligations and commitments from my regular routine began to disappear as a result of the pandemic, I made sure to create myself a new routine to keep me happy, healthy and stimulated!
My new schedule still means that I am training, engaging in a new batch of hobbies, still flexing my competitive muscles and finding the joy in some new and wonderful habits.
I don’t tend to struggle with motivation to train and having to do it on my own now hasn’t really been a problem for me, I’m lucky to be one of those crazy individuals who always trains like it’s a competition and I actually quite enjoy the freedom to do some things slightly more varied. The biggest challenge for most people currently seems to be being able to get their hands on some gym equipment.
Fortunately for me, it seems that my housemate (Craig) has been preparing for some kind of pandemic or apocalypse for quite some time, and all of the random pieces of gym equipment (lots of which I complained about and made him disassemble after I moved in) have now become an absolute godsend. We have a large double garage, so after eating some humble pie, I asked Craig if I could use all of his neglected equipment and some bits and bobs that I had to turn half of the garage into a home gym. Add in a couple of pieces of donated equipment from my local kickboxing gym and I have a pretty decent home gym set up that enables me to do 99% of my normal weights training programme at home! There is a pretty funny gym induction video that Craig and I filmed the weekend that we set everything up that I suggest you look for in my saved Instagram stories (Iso Swole).
I have joked a few times in the past few weeks that my life now is not too dissimilar to the one that I lead when we are not suffering a global pandemic. Training is the main feature; I have lots of free time and I engage in several random hobbies to keep me entertained and challenged. Away from netball, each week I typically spend a day volunteering, two evenings a week at salsa lessons as well as heading to at least one yoga class a week. Fortunately, I can still practice yoga from the comfort of my home, and I have been using the opportunity to access classes from my yoga app, as well as LIVE practices via Zoom and Instagram from a variety of studios. Unfortunately, salsa and volunteering are not social distance friendly activities and have since fallen at the wayside ☹. To fill the gap, I have been spending some time reading and have started to learn French.
In a dream world, I would love for Sara and I to be able to take a ‘travelmoon’ at some point after we get married, which would be a year of the two of us travelling around the World as our epic version of a honeymoon. I decided that it would be a good idea for the both of us to learn a different common foreign language so that when we are away, we can get by more easily and not be ignorant and reliant on people speaking English wherever we are. My understanding of Spanish is much better than my French, however, Sara’s Spanish is much better than mine, given that her sister lives in El Salvador. So, I decided to try something new and I am struggling through the French verbs. Another talent, that I wish I had, along with a more natural affinity to languages, is being more musical. My housemate Craig is annoyingly musical and can play a variety of instruments, which does mean that the spare room is full of instruments. Much to my sister’s delight, as she is at home with me each day, I have taken up the piano and I am trying to spend an hour each weekday tinkling the ivories. Chopin is most definitely stuffing dirt into his ears in his grave!
In the absence of competitive sports, both to participate in and watch, I have instigated a daily house competition called ‘The Isolation Games’. Each day Keisha, Craig and I take it in turns to pick any activity for us to compete against each other with, for which scores are handed out at the end of each day depending on where you finish. Some of the funnier moments as well as an updated leader board make it onto my Instagram story. We are currently on Day 20 (I think?) and I have clawed my way to the top of the table, and I am hoping to stay there for the remainder of social isolation. Some of the activities that we have engaged in so far include: Bananagrams, turbo snap, a wordsearch, a virtual escape room and cornhole! It is lots of fun, gives us something to look forward to each evening, gets us up and away from the television and gives the house time together!
An inevitability of Netball is that your weekends are almost always taken up with training or even better, GAMEDAYS, meaning consecutive days off are like gold dust. When putting together my new routine it seemed important to make sure that each day did not just bleed from one into the other, and so I get up each weekday at 7am and I am focussed on training with intensity for whatever is planned for that day along complemented by sticking to my healthy eating habits, trying to avoid too much TV, getting outside for some fresh air and challenging myself and my housemates with my new hobbies. However, I have discovered the joy of a weekend that is for new habits, rest and recovery (and sometimes me making my house do a training session, haha)! I have found that being able to ‘switch off’ each Friday evening and getting excited about the pending weekend gives me a huge boost for my wellbeing and a mental refresh.
On Friday nights we now have a regular cheese board and movie night, with each of us taking it in turns to pick a movie for us to watch together. On Saturday and Sundays, I delight in not setting an alarm, texting my sister when I wake up to bring me cups of tea in bed and not getting dressed until I absolutely have to! On Saturday afternoons I have been listening to one of my favourite bands doing an Instagram LIVE each weekend and best of all on Saturday nights we get take away and try to support a different local restaurant each week.
The people that know me laugh at me for thinking that organised fun can be fun (duh, of course it is!), my sister complains daily at the amount of fruit/vegetables that I cook for her (my mum would be proud!) and my housemate spends at least two days shuffling around the house with DOMS after a Saturday house workout. However, I’m fairly certain that people pay 100s of dollars to live in what is effectively a health retreat and the general consensus from people that follow me on Instagram is that my house would be the best place to be to isolate 😉
Frank x
Instagram: @StcyJyneFrancis
