What It Means To Start Training As An Adult

I grew up with the belief that you become good at something as a child. And it’s not so much about practice or time spent doing the thing, but that you are good at something because you just are. You’re creative, or you’re sporty, or you’re academic, and that absolute given to you by your parents or other adults, or even other children, makes it true. 

So if you were told that you’re either sporty or not sporty, you were likely set up to be active or not very active throughout the rest of your life, just because you learnt to believe that this is the way you are. Imagine feeling like you didn’t have permission or confidence to do exercise, because you believed you weren’t and couldn’t be good at it? And if you were sporty then you competed in your sports. The focus was on being the best, better than everyone else, reinforcing that it wasn’t about fun or wellbeing, but only doing something because you’re good at it.

Why am I even talking about when I was a kid? Because my experience ties into this idea that as adults we can’t be active and capable like we could be as children. The idea that with age comes aching joints, and less mobility, low levels of fitness, and an increased risk of injury. The literal ageing process that we can’t stop.

But this just isn’t true. 

The human body is absolutely amazing and can adapt at any stage in life. You don’t need to have a background in sport or to have been super active as a child, to become physically strong and capable as an adult. You can become physically strong and capable as an adult, because you have a body like everyone else. It has the potential for so much. You just have to use it.

Working out was the first real accessible form of exercise I started doing as an adult. What feels like many eons ago, I decided to become a personal trainer, because the idea of exercising for wellbeing and for fun made sense to me. And so I starting working out in a gym, learning as much as I could about what I could do with my body. It was mind blowing, this idea that my adult body could become strong, flexible and resilient. I didn’t need a serious background in any kind of sport to make that a reality. I just needed a willingness to learn and to be consistent with my training. 

Training as an adult and learning things for the first time as an adult is a unique experience. It’s weird and confusing and exhilarating. I can still remember the first time I tried something new, when I couldn’t do it or was only just learning how.

I remember when I couldn’t do a push up, and I had to practice half reps on my knees. You never take push ups for granted when you know you once couldn’t do them to save your life. I remember the first time I held a barbell across my back and I did a back squat. It was the oddest sensation, not being able to “see” the bar. I couldn’t visualise it, I had no idea how it was connecting with my body, and how I was supposed to move with it. I remember my first pull up, my first box jump, my first burpee! Yikes! Gassed out after one rep. 

When I first learnt locomotion, trying to coordinate the opposite hand and foot to do a crawl was such a challenge. My limbs just didn’t know what to do. And handstands? I remember the effort in just kicking up to a wall and holding myself there, forget any kind of “form”. It took so much strength just to support my body upside down.

Over the years it’s felt like parts of my brain have been switching on for the first time in my life, as I learn more skills and my body awareness grows. I’m creating brand new muscle memory. Instead of sitting here, 31 years old, wishing I could do the things I could do when I was a kid, the 5 year old me wishes she could do what I can do now. I’ve never been as strong or physically capable as I am now, and I still feel like I’m only just starting out. 

It can be a hard road at times. It can take longer to learn new skills as an adult, and it can feel frustrating at times. I’ve put a lot of time into building a good foundation, and focussed on specific skills. I haven’t got it right the whole time either. I’ve injured myself, I’ve overtrained, I’ve experienced burnout. It’s an ongoing process. Occasionally I will look at a video of someone half my age training circus and think, if only… But it doesn’t actually matter, because the point is I’m doing something now.

One of the great things about the fitness industry, and I guess social media, is that we’re now seeing so many more people start their journey later in life. We’re also seeing people moving towards more holistic training, where the priority is caring for your joints and being able to move well in every day life. The goal is becoming moving as well as you can for as long as you can. It’s about giving yourself a body that allows you to do what you need to do each day with ease, with no pain and restriction. And the byproduct is that by creating this better condition that your body is in, so many possibilities open up for you for things you can learn. 

So where does one even start? With the sheer overload of information we have access to it can be hard to know how and where to start with simply getting moving. This is what has helped me over the years:

Join a Community

Having the support of like minded people not only keeps you motivated but holds you accountable. You never know who you’ll meet, what opportunities it can create, and how it will impact your life. This could be online forums, or a Facebook group, or your local gym. Find your people and become part of something to help you get started and stay on track.

I know that community has been pivotal for me in my development as an athlete, a circus artist and as a coach. The more support you have, the more people around you to help lift you up, the easier it becomes to stick with what you’re doing, form new habits, and reach your goals.

Find a Coach

There are a lot of valuable reasons for getting yourself a coach. A good coach will be able to safely get you started working towards your goals. A good coach can help educate you so that you start to develop your own autonomy around training. 

Even though the body is resilient, it’s still possible to get inured, particularly when you’re starting out. It’s easy to do too much too fast, especially if you’re having the best time. If you want to be in this for the long haul, it’s worth getting help to pace yourself and be as safe as possible.

It’s also the faster route to learning anything. Yes, you can copy things off Instagram and you can “self-teach”, but it will always be a slower and potentially less effective process. A coach removes guesswork. 

Try EVERYTHING

You don’t know what you’ll enjoy until you try it. There is no correct way to exercise, and if it’s something you’ll enjoy then you’ll stick with it. Try and drown out any pressure you might be feeling to learn specific things and focus on what it is that you actually want. Don’t learn something solely because you think it’s cool, if the experience is going to be a bad one. Except for handstands, everyone should learn how to handstand (jk). Knowing what you like will help with goal setting and help you to focus your training to make the progress you want. 

Don’t Rush

The best piece of advice is to take your time. Anyone who’s started training later in life will understand that feeling of trying to play catch up. It can be easy to push hard because you feel like you’re running out of time, or you should be better than you are. But you can’t change where you are, so you might as well take your time, make steady safe progress, and enjoy it.

I’ll say it again, the human body is amazing. It wants to move and do the things it was built to do, so take the opportunity to explore your potential and build the best body you can.