Becoming more active: “I can feel myself getting stronger”

In her fifth blog post for us, Shona tells us how swimming has become much more than a hobby for her. 

Shona’s fifth blog post: I didn’t realise how much swimming has helped me, until I faced having to take a break from it

 In last month’s post about my swimming journey I spoke about getting into a routine and swimming becoming a regular part of my life. However, for at least the next month that’s going to be disturbed. Whilst I’ve come to love swimming I don’t do it competitively, it’s always been a hobby and something I’d hoped would help my physical and mental wellbeing, so it’s inevitable that other parts of my life will impact it, and five months in that has happened.

For a couple of years now I’ve wanted to get a few ear piercings, nothing fancy, but my health has always got in the way. At first it was the constant surgeries that made it difficult, and then the scans afterwards. However, it’s one of those things I’ve realised my health doesn’t need to impact. I can get titanium earrings that won’t be affected in scans and I can keep my infection risk down by properly cleaning my piercings, so why put it off any longer? Then I realised that I probably can’t swim for a while afterwards but information online differs. However,  it’s looking like I’m best staying away from the pool for around a month. This threw up an unexpected dilemma for me.

Swimming has become a fun hobby for me, but more than that, it’s been beneficial to my mental health wellbeing and I can feel myself getting stronger. I guess I just didn’t realise how much swimming has helped me until I faced having to take a break from it. This year has flown by and I can’t believe it’s already been five months since I started this journey, so I’m hoping one month away from swimming will fly by too.

I think a break from swimming will only make me more determined to try and complete my original goal , which was going swimming once a week. I’ve had a busy few months and swimming has fallen down my list in terms of what gets my time first. A break away from it always makes me realise how much of a difference it makes to my life. I feel happy and strong when I swim.

So, I suppose my goal for the next four to six weeks is to throw myself back into swimming once I’m able to. I want to make sure that I make it a part of my weekly routine again. I think it would be easy to just stop going altogether after such a long break but I think I will feel ready than ever to get back into the pool!

If you didn’t catch Shona’s last blog post, you can read it here.

Keep a look out on our news section, Twitter and Facebook to see how Shona gets on achieving her goals over the next six weeks.