I am the Executive Assistant for the Chief Operating Officer (Health). Before lockdown, I enjoyed going to the gym and BeActive classes like yoga and pilates. I started doing yoga in 2000 and have had many different teachers and participated in many different styles of yoga over the past 20 years.

So, I would say yoga is one of my hobbies along with meditation, cycling, walking/hiking, travel, and studying foreign languages. I really miss travelling and walking/hiking the most, so I joined the MYM programme to try to keep physically active. I felt that I was not quite getting enough cardio exercise and my daily steps had dropped dramatically from 10-15,000 per day to 5-8,000 per day.

 

I was keeping up with yoga, pilates, and stretching, but I needed to move more. So MYM really helped motivate me to do some more active workouts like ab blast and upper body resistance.

I had lost some weight before lockdown but then started to put it back on, so with the help of MYM and my King’s Sport personal coach, I managed to maintain and even lose a bit of weight again through doing more varied exercise routines.

I thought that the yoga and meditation would be enough for my mental health, but once I started to cycle and jog and do more cardio exercise, I realised that the more physically active I was, the better I felt mentally.

MYM helped me to realise the importance of physical exercise to my mental wellbeing and consequently, I started to cycle and jog even more to supplement the other activities I was doing. My coach helped me to set attainable goals, and when I couldn’t achieve something, he was very supportive and made me feel like that was ok – he even said that if chocolate made me feel better, I could have some!

His approach to helping me was to support and encourage what I already knew I could achieve. He helped me to be kind to myself when I missed a goal and to look ahead to what I could achieve. He also gave me some tools to help with stress and anxiety. The best thing about the MYM programme was the sheer number of options available.

We all have different circumstances, availability, and abilities, so I think MYM did a great job to make sure there was something everyone could dip into at all times of the day for all abilities. I will continue to join the activities online and keep in touch with my coach—and hopefully one day see him in the gym so he can give me some more great advice!