St Mary's University Students' Union

Alice Curr, Ladies’ Football President - “Throughout lockdown I have been going on long walks and completing online HIT videos to keep fit. Hopefully we will be back playing football soon”

Caty Stirling Lee, Ladies' Futsal President - “One of the best things about university sport is being able to keep active within a team environment with all your friends. I definitely missed being able to exercise with other people over lockdown and found it hard to stay motivated! However, I did manage to find some things I enjoyed doing, like running, HIIT workouts and little bit of yoga with my sister. These are all things I hadn’t really done before and so were very much out of my comfort zone. I also got to play a bit of cricket over the summer when restrictions were lifted but I can’t wait to get back to playing football and futsal with the girls in the future”

Kia Chedgey, Netball President - “I have been keeping fit an active throughout lockdown by recently contributing to St Mary’s Netball charity event for Alzheimer’s, where as a club we have been running, walking and cycling to achieve our goal of 2021km! I have also been setting personalised fitness goals each week for physical and mental benefits!”

Chelsey Logan, ex-St Mary’s student and Football Player - “Lockdown has been challenging and I have found exercise as an escape from working at home, I have been going on walks, runs and cycles in order to give me mental stability”

Stephanie Ramsay, keen swimmer - Chlorine and I have almost always had a close relationship, so keeping fit with the pools closed during lockdown was initially a daunting task. I’ve swum and done artistic swimming for most of my life, ever since the local swim club coach recruited me from a public session. I wish I could say it was for my swimming prowess but, at 9 years old, I was just conveniently the right age to be the fourth person on their relay team.

I joined the Out to Swim Angels – the artistic swimming section of the club - in 2016 as a favour to a friend. Once again, I just happened to be available at the right time. But it felt significant. It was the first time I’d been part of a team since a serious accident a couple of years previously and I immediately became immersed. I realised pretty quickly that I needed to be swimming as well, if I wanted the fitness to make it through a routine, so I started attending the weekly women’s session and it built from there.

Pretty soon I found myself standing for Women’s Competitions Captain for the swimming side of the club, and not long after that I was running beginners’ artistic swimming courses. In 2020, I took over the role of Artistic Swimming Chair. As a primarily LGBTQ+ club (although we have members who identify everywhere along the spectrums), and as artistic swimmers, we’re a minority in a minority. So one of our big focuses has been on advocating for artistic swimming for all. This means a long history of supporting men in synchro. It also means making it easy for any adult who wants to give artistic swimming a try.

We’ve been running regular beginners' courses, which I’ve headed up, since 2017 and graduates have gone on to continue artistic swimming at the level they’re most comfortable with. Some have competed at Nationals, others just enjoy coming along for the training. We’re a team sport and our community is important to us.

So. On to 2020.

I’ve already said that lockdown training felt daunting. I can run (ish) but I’ve never taken much enjoyment from it. And I’ve not owned a bike since I gave up my paper round at 14. Out to Swim have done a great job of running Zoom workouts that cover all sorts of areas of fitness, including a flexibility session every week, which is important for artistic swimming. I’m so impressed with everyone’s improvement so far! However, cardio was sorely needed.

Thankfully, I have a friend with a similar relationship with running to mine. So when she suggested at the beginning of Lockdown 1 that we join each other on a WhatsApp call and take regular breaks to do press ups, it seemed like a good idea. The idea was that each time we stopped, we’d be grateful to the press ups, and each time we ran, we’d be glad to be moving again. This is what has become known as a ‘Hideous idea’.

To be clear, a Hideous idea is one that you look at with some trepidation, but you know is going to turn into something great. Soon we were voluntarily running a couple of times a week, and doing extras during lunch breaks. I can’t say that this is an inspirational story of how we’ve both become marathon runners, but it certainly changed our relationship with running. And soon those mid-run core and upper body stations began to have an effect. With open water venues reopening and then pools, we were back to swimming, as well as running. I’ve seen and swum in some beautiful places this year that I’d otherwise never have thought of. And that was my second conversion: open water swimming. But more of that later.

As the Tiers started rising, we found ourselves firmly back on dryland and with a determination to share the benefits of Hideous with a wider community. Hideous was set up as a company, with the long term goal to be a way of connecting anyone with a goal with a coach or support to help them achieve it. If we’d both tried running alone, we’d probably still be in our living rooms.

Our first goal, though, is to provide a community where people can workout at their own pace and with other people. Since the beginning of Lockdown 3 our calls have become somewhat bigger and encompass a range of ages and abilities. Being on a call means no-one can see if you’re sweating your way through or how fast you run. But you do get the benefit of a team effort, a place to chat and the opportunity to watch week-on-week improvement.

So, it’s turned out that perhaps lockdown exercise wasn’t so scary, or difficult as I first thought. In fact, it’s found me a whole community of slowly converting runners, and open water swimmers. And the threat of a circumnavigation swim of Jersey when the world restarts fully. That idea was not mine, but it is Hideous. So, it seems our ethos is catching!"