FIT CLUB
194 ELLE AUSTRALIA
really thinking: “Wow, look at me.
Where did I go off-track and how
do I get back on?”
Conversing with real-life
Olympians, the kind who spend
their nine-to-five working out,
when you haven’t had a good
sweat since Donald Trump was
just a reality TV star is like talking
to Heston Blumenthal about food while eating a Big
Mac. Fitness isn’t just a part of their life, it’s their job.
“I have to be diligent,” hockey player Aran
Zalewski, who made his Olympic debut in Rio as
part of the Kookaburras, told me. “If I put on one
or two kilos, it makes everything harder. But I don’t
need to keep motivated as such. It’s how I live my
life. It’s a part of my profession to make sure
my body is in form.”
Lucky for me (and my penchant for cheesecake), my
livelihood doesn’t rely on consistency at circuit
training, but spending time watching people whose
livelihood does was starting to make me think I could
live better. I could feel better. I could move better.
And the biggest hurdle to changing my ways was
probably more mental than physical – like it often is
even for the pros. “Exercise every day isn’t only
important for physical health, a lot of it is mental. Every
athlete at the Olympic Games is fit. The ones who
win are just the most mentally tough, have resilience
and bounce back better from mistakes,” said water
polo vice-captain and Swisse Olympic ambassador
Rowie Webster. If anyone knows about how important
a strong state of mind is, it’s her. She competes in one
of the most physically demanding and sometimes
rough-and-tumble sports ever invented – water-polo
players often double down on their swimsuits in case
one gets ripped off in a tussle (and ain’t nobody
wanting the underwater camera beaming that footage
into living rooms all over the world).
Surrounded by people in the midst of the best
physical form of their lives, I did what any self-
respecting out-of-shape woman would do – I pumped
them for every pearl of wisdom I could. And I managed
to glean quite a few nuggets. I learned that recovery is
just as important as the workout. “Foam rollers are
excellent recovery tools. They release tightness and
basically feel like a massage,” said Zalewski. “And
protein is key – a shake, bananas, a protein bar. Better
recovery from exercise is essential to a great performance
as well as getting you back to the gym the next day.”
Exercise is like a train. Once you climb into the
carriage, it kind of just rolls itself along. “First of all,
find something that you enjoy. If you don’t like running
on a treadmill, try something else. Once you’ve found
it, there’s a magical little thing called endorphins. Youwill instantly feel better once they kick in. But also,
don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re always doing
better than the person on the couch,” Webster explained
passionately, perhaps in the hope of inspiring me to
put down the lightly salted potato chips and quit
watching so many Real Housewives franchises. Hockey
midfielder Zalewski echoed the same feel-good mantra
and told me exercise is better in the AM. “It doesn’t
matter what it is – just do something first thing in the
morning and it sets you up for the day. It gets
the endorphins going, you’ll have more energy and
you just feel better about all that you can accomplish.”
“Just move,” said my personal-trainer friend flatly,
clearly spent with the idea of me talking about exercise
instead of doing it. So I did. For someone FOB (fresh off
baby), he advised against running (let’s not put the cart
before the horse and all that) and suggested I just keep
a record of how far I walked. Accountability, he said, is
the first step. So I got a Fitbit, signed up for a gym
membership, spent a lot of money on lycra and started
moving. Using my body for what it was built for. I won’t
lie and say there weren’t setbacks. Simone Biles has
described the process of getting in shape for a big
competition as “repeatedly convincing yourself you
aren’t going to die”. Which is funny, because that’s
kind of how I felt during the first gym session back in
a long time – and I wasn’t even training for a medal.
But it was never as hard as it was the first time.
A few months on and I’m not half the size I was or
anything quite as TV infomercial as that, but I have
never had more compliments about the glow in my
skin and, more importantly, I feel completely different.
I am strong. It’s like I’m living in this body, not
just watching it from the sidelines. Sure, I won’t
be starting my campaign for 2020 (though I am
excellent at table tennis) and I will never be able to
throw down with the athletes I met in Rio, but I might
have just found my personal best. q“Find something you enjoy – if you don’t
like running, try something else... And
don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re doing
better than the person on the couch”
Photography: Stephanie Sian Smith; Sevak Babakhani (still-life).
Model is in no way associated with this story