Try Your 31 Kits On

On Monday, in an inexplicable moment of confusion I decided to lay down a challenge to my colleagues. ‘Practice what you preach’ I thought to myself, and just before setting off for a quick visit to the gym at lunchtime I challenged my colleagues to do sport, recreation, exercise (or whatever precise terminology you prefer) every day in August. I’d obviously forgotten that my colleagues are both unlikely to miss an opportunity to leap on such a statement and also that they’re generally pretty competitive too. Thus, with no planning or forethought or pre-stretching, the Sport and Recreation Alliance #Try Your Kit On 'August challenge' was born.

More seriously, this is part of our #tryyourkiton season where we’re using the excitement and profile of Rio to further boost the visibility of our members and their multitude of activities. We’ve given several new things a try ourselves in the past, most recently learning to play Boccia on our away afternoon in July and I’m sure that this month will see us collectively trying a few new things too – any sensible ideas are very welcome!

My August challenge probably won’t contain many new things unfortunately as I’m also juggling this renewed commitment to activity with learning to be a new Dad. Less free time means a bit more creativity in using my commute and short pockets of time in the day to be more active. I’m redoubling my efforts to travel in the most active way possible and to squeeze physical activity into less time than ever. It’s been good so far this week, and I’ve managed a gym visit, cycling and running. What I’m realising already though is how hard it is to find the time and to stay motivated alongside a family and a busy full time job. And I’m already reasonably fit, motivated and have enjoyed a number of sports and activities for years. The scale of the challenge in getting inactive people into good, healthy and active lifestyles is huge. We’re not expecting people to go from nothing to daily exercise, but challenges like this can of course be a great motivator and a good kickstart.

Why don’t you challenge your family, colleagues and friends to join us in the challenge? It’s not about running marathons, breaking records and scaling peaks. It’s about having fun and being active, building exercise into busy schedules and celebrating everything that’s great about sport and recreation in this country. There are no rules, there’s no ‘right or wrong’ form of activity, no minimum time requirements and no pre-determined level of necessary effort. It’s about just doing a bit more, every day throughout the #tryyourkiton campaign until the end of September. Enjoy!

We’ll be sharing via our website, blogs and Twitter our efforts to be active every day in August. We’d love to hear about what you’re up to. All you have to do is do it, post it to Twitter with your photos, and hashtag it - #tryyourkiton.

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